Totem
by The RyRy
Summary: Nooj, Gippal, and Baralai have found a sphere in Zanarkand that does something rather unexpected and is mysteriously connected to one of the dress spheres of the Gullwings. What's the story behind the sphere?
1. Chapter One

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Author's Note: You guys know the deal. I don't own FFX-2 or any of the characters. I want to thank the person who inspired me for this fic – Brandi – and the person who read all my chapters faithfully and kept me going – Lee. I couldn't have done it without you guys.

Please feel free to review and tell me how I can get better. Normally I don't post to since I have a webpage of my own where I house fics, but I thought the universe could use some more Nooj/Gippal/Baralai-centric stories.

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Gippal's face lit up when he opened the long-forgotten treasure box around the back of the dome in Zanarkand. "Hey guys?" He looked back over his shoulder toward Baralai and Nooj who were exploring and fiendhunting in the ruined city. The search for Spira's true past had not abated since the defeat of Shuyin and the destruction of Vegnagun -- if anything, it had picked up more for the three former members of the Crimson Squad. "Guys?" Gippal called, turning his eye back on the treasure inside the box, "Come here and look at this."

"If there's anything an Al Bhed can't resist, it's something shiny buried in a box," Baralai teased gently as he came to Gippal's side, supporting himself with his hand on Gippal's back as he crouched down to look at the incredibly shiny, light-filled object nestled inside velvet in the chest. "Whoa... it's a sphere," he said, reaching his hands out to take it in his palms.

Gippal smacked him on the wrist. "I found it first, it's mine to--"

"Don't touch it."

The two young men looked up at Nooj, who had suddenly come to stand above them. He was eyeing the sphere suspiciously through those glasses he wore low on his nose, appraising it. "Aw, why not?" Gippal objected, leaning forward to get a closer look.

"Because it's a dress sphere."

"A dress sphere?" Baralai looked at it closely now, too. "How can you tell?"

"There are no playback options," Nooj pointed out flatly, taking Gippal by the elbow and hauling him to his feet. "Now, leave it--"

"But someone else could find it," Gippal insisted, wrenching himself out of Nooj's grasp. "It's mine, I don't care what it is!"

"I thought these things were _created_, from old broken spheres," Baralai said, still gazing at it, mesmerized.

"They are," Nooj replied, his interest piqued by Baralai's observation. "But this one is obviously old... but, then again, sphere technology is an old craft..."

"No, wait, remember what Yuna said about her dress sphere?" Gippal crouched back down again, looking at the sphere in awe. "That Lenne girl... something about how spheres carry the emotions and memories of their previous owners."

"Like at that concert," Baralai murmured, "she said that she _became_ Lenne."

"Dress spheres are so _girly_," Gippal muttered, but with a grin on his face. "I wonder how they work..."

"No, don't touch it," Baralai exclaimed, reaching out and grabbing Gippal's wrist before he could take the sphere. "It's dangerous. You don't know what it could do to you... we should take it back and have it examined."

"Are you _kidding_?" Gippal laughed and pulled his hand away from Baralai. "The worst it's gonna do is change my clothes. That's what dress spheres do, right?"

"Mostly," Nooj replied, looking over at Gippal now. "But considering that this one is _here_ of all places... it can't be normal."

"Tch," Gippal replied, waving his hand flippantly. "Live life on the edge, guys. At worst, I'm gonna wind up wearing some skimpy dress, then you guys can have a good laugh."

Before the other two could stop him, Gippal reached forward and put both of his palms on the sphere.

Instantly, light engulfed him and when it abated, Gippal was gone.

------

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_"Hey, we never got to use these much, might as well!" _

_"If you want. There's nothing that can get us here."_

_"Alright, here we go!" _

_Gippal's vision swarmed around him for moments before it cleared, and he fell back, startled. Everything looked so strange, like he was in a completely different world. The light was bright, and there were leaves and flowers..._

_...and Rikku?_

_"Rikku!" he said, so happy to see the familiar Al Bhed girl that he forgot to call her by the stupid nickname that she hated so much, and with a burst of energy, he ran over to her. _

_But things were so strange, it was almost as if he couldn't see straight. He practically ran into her, throwing himself off balance._

_Before he knew it, Rikku had picked him up in her arms. How she was able to do this, Gippal wasn't really sure, but he was relieved to have some sort of balance and support. _

_"Aww, you're awfully affectionate," she said patting him on the head and looking at him with that inquisitive look that Rikku was well-known for. _

_Gippal rolled his eyes. Wait... **eyes**? Plural? _

_He put his hands up over his face. No eyepatch. No eyepatch! He had both of his eyes!_

_How was this possible? _

_Was it the dress sphere?_

_"What's his name?" Gippal looked over to see that it was Yuna, the High Summoner, who had said that to Rikku. _

_Worst of all, she was looking at him with that same look on her face. Ugh, and she was running her fingers over his scalp... it felt so good, and Gippal couldn't help but to lean his head into the affection. _

_But he was pissed that Yuna didn't remember his name! How could she forget?? She had only, like, saved the world with his help! He looked at her, putting on the most discontent look he could muster. And he pouted. _

_"Aww!" Rikku squealed, practically right in his ear. "He's so adorable!"_

_Gippal really wished Rikku would quit it. He wasn't adorable, damnit. Drop dead sexy, maybe, but not adorable. _

_"So, what good is he?" _

_Gippal looked over now. Okay, that was definitely Paine who had said that. Man, it was nice to have two eyes! He didn't have to turn his head all the way around to see someone. But seeing Paine was so much better than seeing Rikku, and Gippal immediately dislodged himself from Rikku's grasp and went to hide behind Paine. Why were these girls acting so strangely around him?_

_"Oh, he likes you, Paine!" Rikku clapped her hands together and peeked around Paine's body at Gippal. _

_Gippal hid further, but his efforts were thwarted when Paine reached around and grabbed him by the waist and shoved him into Rikku's waiting hands. Gah, back in that girl's grasp! Had to get away..._

_"So, come on Rikku, what's his name?" Yuna pleaded, running her hands down Gippal's spine now. Why was she doing that? _

_"I don't know, why don't we ask him?" Rikku looked down at Gippal and raised her eyebrows expectantly._

_Gippal didn't know what to do. Not even Rikku recognized him? Or Paine? What in Spira was going on? _

_Oh wait! He remembered now! The dress sphere! And he had two eyes... it must have completely changed his appearance. They probably didn't recognize him because of the dress sphere. It made perfect sense. "It's me, Gippal," he said, looking back up at Rikku. Hah, bet that was unexpected! He wished there was a mirror so he could see himself._

_"What did he say?" Yuna asked, looking down at Gippal's face. _

_"I dunno," Rikku replied, patting Gippal's nose. Gippal wished she would just stop. "What'd you say again, boy?"_

_Gippal sighed. "Gippal! It's me!" _

_Rikku giggled. "Well, I can't understand what you're saying, but I guess I didn't expect that. Though it sounds like you said 'Ghiki', so that'll be your name!" _

_"Ghiki?" Gippal replied incredulously, rolling his eyes. "You're just playing with me now, come on..."_

_"Good thing we never used this sphere in battle," Paine remarked in her usual flat manner. "You two would have spent too much time standing around gawking at the monkey and we would have been dead before we got anything accomplished."_

_"MONKEY?!" Gippal was furious. How dare Paine call him something like that?? "What did I ever do to deserve to be called a--"_

_"He's getting a little hyper, Rikku," Yuna said, putting her hand on Gippal's head again. "Maybe you'd better change back before he wakes up Uncle Cid..."_

_"Yeah, that's a good idea," Rikku replied sadly, patting Gippal on the head. "Sorry boy. Maybe sometime when Pops isn't sleeping, I'll bring you out to play again and see what you can do, k?" _

_"No, wait, Rikku," Gippal tried to protest, but before he got very far, his vision went blurry again, and a strong light came out of nowhere and he was lost in it once again. _

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"Gippal!"

Gippal shook his head, his vision clearing, and returning to normal. "...guys?" It was so nice to be called by his actual name.

"Hey, hey," Baralai said, and it was then that Gippal realized that Baralai was cradling him in his arms. How embarrassing. "What happened to you?"

"Let him recover his senses," Nooj said, offering Gippal some water. "I imagine getting sucked into a sphere has quite the effect on the equilibrium."

"Sucked... into... a sphere...?" Gippal thought he had lost his mind. Maybe he had just passed out and had some really weird dream. Regardless, he took the water and quenched his dry throat with it.

"Yeah," Baralai said, allowing Gippal to sit up a little more. "You put your hands on it, then there was this light, and you were gone..."

"And you reappeared just now, but it's been almost ten minutes," Nooj added, wincing a little as he adjusted the way he was sitting on the ground. Gippal made a mental note to have a look at the mechanics of Nooj's leg later.

"Ugh," Gippal replied eloquently. He had a headache. "I think I passed out, and had this really messed up dream..."

"We kept hearing you shouting your name, and some other things," Baralai said gently, looking back over at the sphere, "from inside, I mean."

"What did you dream?" Nooj offered the water again.

Gippal took the water... again. He felt like such a pansy. "I was with the girls, you know, the Gullwings," he explained finally, "but they were acting all weird. Like they couldn't understand what I was saying, and they kept calling me 'cute' and 'adorable' and acting like they didn't recognize me."

"Well, cute and adorable aside, it _is_ a dress sphere," Nooj said with a smirk. "Your entire appearance was probably changed--"

"I had two eyes," Gippal broke in suddenly. He put his hands to his face... the eyepatch was back. Only one eye, as if his depth perception didn't indicate that right off.

"--okay, but I've never heard about them adding body parts," Nooj finished, that smirk disappearing from his face.

"It was so weird," Gippal continued, lowering his head. "And Paine called me a _monkey_!"

"A monkey?" Baralai looked like he was repressing a snicker.

Nooj, however, was not successful in his similar attempts.

"Jackasses," Gippal muttered, and then laid back fully on the ground.

"Probably better than being a monkey," Nooj replied flatly.

Baralai's voice broke the momentary tension. "So, what do we do with it?"

"We should keep it," Nooj answered, shifting his weight and making various parts of his leg clink together.

"Man, you've gotta let me look at that when we get back to camp," Gippal said, lifting his head and looking at Nooj. "That thing's been making too much noise."

Nooj didn't respond.

"I guess we're taking it then," Baralai said quietly, looking at the sphere. "But maybe we should talk to Lady Yuna about this before we do anything else..."


	2. Chapter Two

Camp was quiet, and it was in the middle of the night in Zanarkand. The pyreflies were swarming and the monkeys were chattering. Damned monkeys. They kept reminding Gippal of what had happened earlier that afternoon.

No matter what he did or what he tried to think about, Gippal's mind and eye always came back to the sphere. It was sitting right there in the box, only a few yards away... he wanted to find out what exactly had happened to him. Nooj and Baralai were asleep... they wouldn't have to know. He could just do it discreetly.

They would tell him it was dangerous... but he had been there. He knew that there was no possibility of him getting hurt. It was just Rikku... he could handle it. And maybe now that he knew what was going on, sort of, he could figure out a way to ask questions.

And so, as quietly as he possibly could, he crawled over to the box and opened the lid with a slight creak. The dress sphere glowed yellow in the dark, and he swallowed, carefully reaching his hands out toward it.

It seemed to pull to him, like someone was calling him.

_Ghiki..._

Gippal jumped back. That was Rikku's voice. He could hear it.

He looked over toward Nooj and Baralai. Still asleep, as peacefully as either of them ever were.

His attention was focused back on the sphere. _Ghiki..._

"That's not my name," he whispered, barely audibly. However, his palms had come into contact with the sphere, and the light and haze overtook him again, and he was gone.

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_"Ghiki!" _

_Gippal's vision cleared. "Rikku!"_

_"Oh, how cute, you know my name!" She squeaked and scratched him under the chin. Gippal had to admit it felt good. "I'm sad that I didn't use you before," she continued, still scratching under his chin, "you might've made the whole thing a little more cheerful!"_

_Gippal rolled his eyes. "I was there," he tried to say. _

_Rikku pretended like she was listening. "But, it's all over now. Things are quiet, and I can take the time to get to know you and how you work." _

_"Rikku," Gippal said. That seemed to be the one word she understood of his. _

_"You're so cute," she said, and then proceeded to... cuddle him._

_Gippal wanted to vomit... but... it felt strangely nice. She was warm, and her skin felt so soft on his fur._

_...fur?_

_**Since when did Gippal have fur?!**_

_He ran his hands over his arms, behind his neck, around the back of his head. Fur. Everywhere. Panicked, Gippal looked down at his hands now, noticing for the first time that they weren't really hands at all._

_They were paws._

_And what was this strange feeling from his back? Muscles tensing and relaxing... what was it? He turned his head and looked._

_He had a tail. A nice, very pale brown tail. _

_It was flicking back and forth at him. He could feel it; he watched it, incredulous, for several moments. _

_"Aww, you're so cute, even if you're dumb," Rikku said, patting Gippal on the head._

_Gippal turned and glared. He was not dumb, damnit! _

_"You're supposed to be a sacred animal, you know," Rikku informed him, petting him behind his ears. It felt so good; Gippal just wanted to purr. "So, if you're so sacred, what can you do?"_

_"I have fast hands," Gippal answered, "I can take apart machinery and-- you can't understand me at all, can you?"_

_Gippal's words sounded perfectly fine to his own ears, but considering that he really did seem to be a monkey and Rikku was giving him that same blank stare as she always did, he was willing to bet money that Rikku didn't understand a word he was saying. _

_"Well, go on," Rikku said, putting him down on the floor. "Show me what you can do."_

_Gippal looked over at a piece of machinery in the corner. He had no idea what it was, but it would be useful to prove his point. Maybe when she saw his skill with the machines, she would finally get it. So he walked -- more like kind of hopped and skipped, but it felt completely normal to him -- over to the machine and put his hands inside of it, beginning to take it apart quickly. Inside he found a grenade and some scrap metal holding it together, and he promptly extracted these and brought them back over to Rikku._

_She squealed with delight, of course. "Oh, you're a little thief too! How perfect!" She grinned and took the grenade from him, and petted him on the shoulder blades. It made Gippal's spine tingle._

_"Gullwings!" came a loud, frantic voice over the speaker system that rocked Gippal's ears. The speaker had to be none other than Brother. "To the bridge! We have spotted something strange!"_

_"Come on Ghiki," Rikku said, hoisting Gippal up into her arms. Gippal was slightly amazed at how well this little girl could handle him all of a sudden. She put him up on her shoulder, and he latched on to her head for balance. _

_They rode the elevator up to the bridge, and Gippal had to admit that he was impressed by the Celsius. _

_"It's coming from Macalania," he heard another male voice say, "there's a strong influx of fiends coming from the forest and into the lake area. They're worried about them getting to Bevelle."_

_"Well, the Gullwings are on it!" Yuna made a pose on the deck, and Rikku clapped. _

_That was when there was a loud crash from outside, followed by the airship rocking back and forth in mid-air. "What in the world?" asked several people, none of whom Gippal could identify. _

_"There is a fiend on the deck!" Brother announced looking up through the front window of the airship. "It's going toward the engines!"_

_Yuna, Rikku, and Paine all looked at each other. "We're on it," they said at the same time and, taking Gippal with them, they rushed back to the elevator and up to the deck._

_Gippal felt a rush of tension, which abated slightly as he was carried out into the cold rushing air. "Rikku, can you fight like that?" Paine asked, glaring at Gippal._

_"I think so," Rikku replied, rushing forward. _

_Gippal meant to smirk at Paine, but he was distracted. The moment he looked up, he locked eyes with something horrible. _

_And he wasn't even sure it was eyes he was seeing. It was dark and deadly, a black haze that showed no form, thick and almost signaling coming death. This wasn't like being shot by Nooj, or getting into that accident that had lost him his eye. Gippal was frightened and terrified, feeling the very fiber of his being taken control of by this... creature, if it could even be called that. _

_It felt like Shuyin, but it wasn't. It wasn't just the despair this time... this was darker and more ominous. Like the bringer of death... and Gippal was going to die. He felt it. _

_He clawed frantically at Rikku's neck and hair, trying to get away from it in any way possible. _

Gippal!

_What was that? Was that his name? He had to get away... death was coming. _

Gippal! Come back!

_Back... he could go back... he had to get far away from this thing. He could feel it inside of him, even though he closed his eyes and looked away it still watched him..._

_"Rikku! We need cure spells!"_

_"I'm on it!"_

_Thank goodness... she was changing... Gippal could go back. The death was there, it permeated his blood, but he was being set free... _

_------_

_------_

"Gippal!"

Gippal's eyes flew open, and he gasped, trying to get away from the feeling of death. "It... death... was there... I can't..."

"I told you it was dangerous," Baralai said admonishingly, holding Gippal down as he struggled. "Calm down, you're safe."

"Here," Nooj said, and then Gippal felt the older man's arms under his shoulders, elevating his head. Then, there was something soft and comfortable under his neck -- presumably a pillow. A cloth wiped Gippal's forehead, and it was only then that he realized he had been breaking out in a cold sweat. "Relax, Gippal," Nooj said so flatly that it was oddly soothing. "Deep breaths, then you can tell us what the hell you thought you were doing."

It took Gippal a few minutes to relax, some of it spent closing his eye and breathing deeply, leaning back into Baralai's arms. One thing was for certain; Baralai knew the advantages of a human touch to calm someone down. Gippal was eternally thankful. Finally, he was able to open his eye and look up at Nooj or Baralai without shaking and fearing the onset of death, and at last he was able to speak clearly. "I've figured out what it does... sorta," he said, sitting up into Baralai's arms. "Rikku has this dress sphere, I think -- she was dressed like a normal Spiran girl with the long dress--"

"Actual clothes," Baralai mused gently. "I thought it was impossible for women now."

"Let him finish," Nooj said as gently as Nooj could say anything.

"Anyway," Gippal continued, trying to clear his thoughts, "It must be new or something, or they didn't use it before, but apparently some sort of sacred animal comes with it. And that... was me."

"So you really were a monkey," Baralai said, laying his hand on Gippal's elbow as if he was trying to communicate that he didn't mean that teasingly at all.

"Yeah," Gippal answered, looking up at Baralai. "Fur and a tail and... two eyes." He put his hand up, feeling for the familiar eyepatch. As much as he disliked that thing sometimes, it was nice to have it back as a reminder that he really was real and this wasn't some bizarre dress sphere incident. "But I had full dexterity, I could still take apart this machine when she asked me to, but it was weird... I was so _small_, she could lift me up and put me on her shoulders..."

"How is that possible?" Nooj asked after a pause. "Dress spheres aren't supposed to do that... they're just clothes and abilities, not _species_."

"You said it yourself," Baralai answered him, "this can't be a normal sphere, since we found it here of all places."

"It's also apparently doing some sort of teleportation thing," Gippal added, sitting up fully without Baralai's help now. "They were in their airship over Macalania, and they had just gotten attacked by some fiends--"

"Fiends attacked the _airship_?" Baralai looked absolutely incredulous.

"It wasn't really a fiend... it was... they were... it was... like Shuyin all over again, except worse," Gippal managed to say. "As soon as we got up there, outside, I could feel it inside of me. It blanked my mind, I couldn't breathe, it felt like... like death."

Nooj looked understandably interested. "What was it?"

"I don't know," Gippal answered, shaking his head. "I was so completely taken over by fear that I couldn't even see straight. There was this black haze, and it just seemed to suck the life out of me."

"Gippal, don't touch the sphere again," Baralai said, putting his other hand on Gippal's arm. "What if you had died in there?"

"Oh believe me, I don't want to do that again," Gippal assured him, trying to smile.

"Keep your hands off it," Nooj warned him, closing the lid of the sphere box emphatically. "At least until we find out more."


	3. Chapter Three

They had worked their way through the scouting of Zanarkand with little effort. There wasn't much to be found -- a single sphere on the building of Vegnagun had been the only useful thing there. Mostly it was just personal records from summoners who had passed though. They kept every sphere they found, however, just in case it would prove to be useful.

Just when they had decided to go to Macalania to investigate the problem that Gippal had heard about in his time on the _Celsius_, Baralai's keen eyes spotted something strange on the road to Mt. Gagazet.

It was a rock. However, it was a perfectly spherical rock... and that was something that didn't happen naturally. Gippal went over to it and picked it up. "It weighs like a regular sphere," he said, bouncing it in his hands a little.

Nooj wet his sleeve in the snow that collected off to the side of the road and wiped the surface of the rock-sphere down with the hem. "It's really dirty," he observed, peering at the newly-cleaned spot. "But it looks like an ancient white sphere."

"A white sphere?" Baralai came over to get a closer look. "The ones that stored--"

"--medical records," Gippal finished, sighing. "Useless. What good would medical records do?"

"You never know," Nooj said, pulling off layers of dirt with the tips of his robotic fingers. "There might be something interesting. It's worth a watch."

The three of them gathered around, each working at cleaning off the sphere as best as he could, until finally the playback buttons were cleared off and the screen was visible. "Let's see if this works," Baralai said, wiping the last of the dust off and pressing the button to play the sphere.

The voice of a woman, scratchy and barely understandable, came through the sphere. Her words were broken. "Discovered source... plague outbreak... released... no human... air... specially trained... blessed... sealed... colossal... Bevelle..."

The screen sputtered and faded after that, and the three looked at it curiously. "Plague?" Baralai finally asked, scraping a little more dirt away.

"There's too much dirt on it, this needs a special reader," Nooj said, wrapping the sphere in a handkerchief. "We should get this back and look at it as soon as possible."

_------_

_------_

The three men gathered around the sphere reader in Bevelle, in Baralai's office, and awaited the machine to warm up and analyze the sphere. Once the light clicked on and the magnifier screen appeared, the playback started automatically.

"We have discovered the source of the plague outbreak," said an image of a woman in long, coarse, gray robes. "The infection was being released around the location of a great tree near the sacred lake, so thick that no human could breathe the air without dying instantaneously." She went on talking, though static obscure the next thing she said, until full audio resumed with "...specially trained creatures, blessed with sacred relics to ward off the infections, controlled by their masters, were able to obtain the root and leaf of the tree and the indestructible power was sealed away in the colossal machine underneath Bevelle. We fear it coming to life again, but it will be many generations before any are powerful enough to destroy the machine."

The screen fizzled and sputtered, the image of the woman disappearing entirely. The three men waited to see if there was more, but the sphere reader clicked off after a moment as well.

After a long silence, Baralai breathed, "Vegnagun."

"That's what it sounds like," Gippal added. "Colossus under Bevelle? What else could that be?"

"Indestructible power," Nooj said, picking up the sphere out of the sphere reader carefully. "Sealed in Vegnagun."

"And... Vegnagun was destroyed." Baralai's voice was shaking.

"Well, good going, people, destroying the thing which housed the indestructible power," Gippal said with a smirk, leaning back and falling into a rather plush chair in Baralai's office.

"It was either that, or have Vegnagun itself destroy the world," Nooj said, turning a glare onto Gippal.

"The reader says that the sphere appears to be more than 1100 years old," Baralai said, taking the sphere from Nooj, glancing over it carefully. "Maybe if Vegnagun sat for so long housing this power, it could have died off... and since Vegnagun was destroyed, wouldn't whatever was inside of it been destroyed as well?"

"Look, it said something about the tree near the 'sacred lake' or whatever," Gippal said, standing up again and pacing. _Ghiki..._ "Maybe we should figure out where that is and go check it out there."

"Gippal," Nooj said, his glare dissolving, "that's the best idea you've had in a while."

"Sacred lake..." Baralai mused, glancing over the sphere. "There's the water in Zanarkand, but that wouldn't have been sacred back then... the only other lake with those sorts of connotations is the one in Macalania--"

"--which is where the girls are headed," Gippal broke in. "Maybe we could kill two birds with one stone... figure out this mystery, and get some answers about that dress sphere." _Ghiki..._

"Then, to Macalania we'll go," Nooj announced, standing up fully.

"We'll leave in the morning," Baralai told them, motioning to the hallway outside the office. "You guys, go get a couple of rooms and get some rest. Sleeping out on the road for so long can grate on you."

_------_

_------_

"Hey Nooj?"

Nooj turned around and faced Gippal, looking at him curiously. "What is it?"

"Uh," Gippal said, kicking at the ground slightly. "Can I... have that dress sphere?"

Nooj raised his eyebrows. "Why?"

_Ghiki!_

Gippal shook his head. The calling, Rikku's voice, it wouldn't go away. "I... know you and Lai are worried, but..."

Nooj took a step closer to Gippal, studying his face. "You never were one to run," he said finally, turning and going back into the room.

"She's calling me, Nooj!" Gippal protested before the other man could shut the door in his face. "I'm worried, she's... I keep hearing her."

"You've gone _crazy_," Nooj replied, trying to shut the door again. "No, I won't let you have it."

"Please!"

"No, Gippal!" Nooj's voice was firm, and his glare even firmer. "You told us what you saw, and I couldn't stand having something happen to you and have it be my fault."

"Thanks for your concern," Gippal said harshly, pushing his arms through the opening of the door and trying to get inside. "But I have to, what if she's in trouble--"

"Rikku helped defeat Vegnagun," Nooj said very calmly. "I'm sure she can handle whatever this is without you butting in and checking up on her."

"You don't understand!" Gippal was now almost entirely in the room. "She's calling me, I can hear her voice, I need to go to her before it drives me insane."

Maybe it was the desperation evident in Gippal's expression, or just the fact that Gippal was trying this hard to get past him, but Nooj softened after a moment. "Fine, Gippal, you can have it," he said, allowing Gippal access to the room, and the treasure box that was sitting in the center of the floor.

"Thanks," Gippal said, moving toward the box.

Before he could get very far, Nooj grabbed his elbow. "But I'm going with you," he informed him.

Gippal was slightly astounded. _Ghiki...?_ "I don't know if that's possible--"

"Any number of people can use a dress sphere at the same time," Nooj said, lifting the lid of the box with his other hand. "And, while you fear death, I don't. Whatever it was that you saw, it won't frighten me."

Gippal looked down at the sphere. "I... don't know what'll happen... but they call me Ghiki." It was a little strange telling Nooj of all people that, but maybe it would help. Then, he smirked as he crouched down to take the sphere. "I hope I don't have to share a brain with you."

"That would frighten me more than death frightens you," Nooj replied, dropping into a slow crouch himself. Machinery in his leg clinked together slightly as he did so. "Now, how do you do this?"

"You just put your palm on it," Gippal explained, reaching out to place his palm on the sphere.

Nooj nodded and gripped onto Gippal's arm with his mechanical hand, and put his hand outstretched next to Gippal's. "Here goes," he said, cocking a bit of a smile at Gippal.

_Ghiki... _Gippal nodded, meeting Nooj's gaze for a split second before they both reached forward and their palms connected with the sphere.


	4. Chapter Four

_"Guys, it's not working!"_

_"Rikku, dress spheres are always supposed to work."_

_"But he's not coming... I don't know what's wrong."_

_"Well, he was awfully scared..."_

_"Let me see it."_

_Gippal's vision cleared, but it was that distorted vision he was slowly getting used to. "Ghiki!!" Gippal turned his head and saw Rikku, and jumped in surprise. She was okay! He rushed over into her arms, and she picked him up and put him on her shoulders. "Where have you been? I was so worried that you were scared away..."_

_"Paine, that's really beautiful," came Yuna's voice. Gippal turned his head to look over at Paine, who had her arm extended and a large bird settling in the crook of her elbow. Yuna had, by this time, crossed over to look at the bird and was examining its beak. "Hi there!"_

_Gippal's eyes widened. "Nooj?" _

_The bird looked over at him. "...Gippal?"_

_"Aww, look, they're talking to each other," Rikku said, walking over to Paine and eyeing the bird -- Nooj. "He's really pretty," she informed Paine. _

_"Interesting," Nooj said, extending his wings out and fluttering them. _

_"You're a bird, man," Gippal answered as if it wasn't obvious._

_"Yeah, and you're a monkey," Nooj replied, looking sideways at Gippal. "I can't see straight."_

_"Me either," Gippal conceded, but was alarmed as Rikku slung him down onto her arm, and he nearly lost his balance.  
  
"Listen to them talking, like they can understand each other," Yuna mused, petting Nooj on the back of his head. "What's his name?"_

_"Nooj," Nooj said, or, in the ears of the girls, squawked. _

_"They can't understand you," Gippal informed him. _

_Nooj just fluttered his wings indignantly. _

_"Do you do anything?" Paine asked Nooj, eyeing the bird on her arm warily. _

_Nooj looked at her indignantly. Gippal laughed, and Rikku poked him. "You sure are noisy today," she said. _

_"Go on," Paine said, making a motion with her arm, "Fly!"_

_"What?" Nooj protested, but Paine physically threw him off her arm before he could really react. For a moment, he looked absolutely panicked, but soon seemed to regain his senses. He was a bird, after all, and it seemed like he remembered that he had wings. With a flurry of feathers, he extended his wings out fully and stopped his downward spiral to the ground with a graceful swoop. Gippal could hear him laughing as he did so._

_Nooj. Laughing. It didn't happen often. _

_Was that a "woohoo!" coming from Nooj's general direction?_

_Boy was that out of character._

_Once Nooj returned to Paine's arm at her whistle, he settled in with a wild flurry of wings. He was still laughing. "Hey man," Gippal said, climbing up on Rikku's shoulder again to get a better look. "You okay?"_

_"Gippal, this is great!" Nooj fluttered his wings again. "To fly... I never imagined."_

_Gippal suddenly felt a little jealous. "I've never heard you laugh like that before."_

_"It... I felt so free--"_

_Nooj was interrupted by Yuna scratching the back of his head again. "You should call him Flurry, with all those feathers, and the way he likes to flap his wings."_

_"Oh, that's a good name!" Rikku agreed, bounding over to Paine with Gippal still on her shoulders. Gippal held on around her head for dear life. _

_"Alright, Flurry it is," Paine said unceremoniously, looking down at Nooj. _

_He looked back up at her, and she blinked, studying him for a second. "Paine, it's me, Nooj," he said. _

_"I think he likes his name," Yuna said. _

_Paine kept her eyes trained on Nooj. Finally, she seemed to remember that she was supposed to respond to Yuna and said, "Yeah, that's probably good."_

_"Oh, Yunie, you should try it! See what you get," Rikku said, clapping her hands together and jumping up and down. _

_Gippal was infinitely glad that he had an increased sense of balance in this form. _

_"Alright," Yuna agreed, and took out her garment grid. _

_Gippal's breath caught in his throat. He looked over at Nooj. Nooj looked back at him. It seemed to click. _

_There were three of the girls with this dress sphere... what did they call it? The Trainer dress sphere? _

_And there were three of them who all had possession of this mystery sphere that sucked them in and transported them here._

_Which meant that whatever Yuna's animal was would have to be Baralai. And as far as either of them knew, Baralai was still in the Praetor's office of New Yevon. _

_Regardless, Yuna rearranged her garment grid and Nooj and Gippal saw the familiar light of a spherechange before they could even think of any way to stop it. _

_Gippal knew he was surprised, and Nooj was too, when Yuna reappeared in her long trainer's dress and a rather strange looking dog came running up to her. She leaned down and petted the dog, who was looking around rather confused. _

_"Oh, Yunie, he's so ugly, but he's cute at the same time," Rikku said, crouching down to get a look at the dog, taking Gippal with her. _

_Gippal, too, eyed the dog. "Baralai?" he asked very carefully. Who else could it be?_

_"Gippal??" The dog turned its head, looking back and forth. "I hear your voice, where are you?"_

_"Up here, Lai, on Rikku's shoulders," Gippal answered, dropping down and hanging from around Rikku's neck. "Don't freak."_

_Baralai looked up, saw Gippal -- Ghiki -- and jumped. "You're a--"_

_"--monkey, I know," Gippal finished. "But don't worry, at least I'm better looking than--"_

_"Oh, listen to those two talking now," Yuna said, scratching Baralai behind his ears. "Ghiki is really friendly."  
_

_"Come on, he's mine!" Rikku bounced from foot to foot irritatingly, making Gippal hold on for dear life. "He HAS to be friendly!" _

_"Can't they understand us?" Baralai asked, looking back and forth between the girls and then back up at Gippal. _

_Gippal shook his head. "No, not at all. Things would be much easier if they could."_

_"Is Nooj here?"_

_"Yeah, he's flying around here somewhere."_

_"...flying?"_

_As if to illustrate this point, Nooj came swooping by them, flapping his wings elegantly through the air. _

_"I see," Baralai said, leaning up into more of Yuna's petting as the girls conversed mindlessly around them. "So how do we go back?"_

_"You want to already?" Nooj asked as he settled back on Paine's arm. _

_"We have to wait until they change out of the dress sphere, at least, that's what I think," Gippal said. _

_"Would you guys be quiet already?" Rikku tapped Gippal on the nose gently. "We're trying to decide on a name for Yunie's dog!"_

_"Dog?!" Baralai exclaimed immediately. "I'm a dog?!"_

_"Aww, listen to him." Yuna leaned down and put her arms around Baralai... effectively making Baralai look right down the top of her dress. Gippal snickered. "Kogoro, that sounds like what he's saying."_

_"Baralai," he tried to say even as he tried to not look down her shirt. "My name's Baralai! I'm Baralai!"_

_"Doesn't work, man," Gippal said, playing randomly with a braid from Rikku's hair._

_"He's doing it again," Yuna mused, rubbing at Baralai's sides now. "Kogoro is your name, little guy, how's that sound?"_

_"Baralai!"_

_"I think he likes it, Yunie," Rikku said, batting Gippal's paw away from her hair._

_"Gullwings!!" The sound grated on Gippal's ears. "Up to the deck!! Another fiend!!!"_

_"Oh no," Rikku said, bouncing on her toes. "Is it that weird black hazy thing from before??"_

_"Might be the same one," Paine said, heading for the elevator and taking Nooj with her. "Since we couldn't figure out how to kill it."_

_"But we did scare it away!" Rikku looked at Yuna worriedly. "Right? Whatever it was?"_

_Gippal could feel his hands starting to tremble. He was recalling what it felt like to look into that thing they had fought, what fear was there. He hoped it wasn't the same thing... but before he could get very far in his wishful thinking, they were up on the deck of the ship. _

_However, instead of burning Gippal's eyes with the black aura of death, something from inside the haze screamed at the sight of them. "No," it said as the haze receded from the ship, "it can't be, not again!"_

_"We must've really scared it before," Rikku said, stroking Gippal's tail for reassurance. Gippal was panting a little from the shock that had gone through his system from anticipating the confrontation._

_"Or something," Paine added, staring off and watching it go. _

_"Doesn't it realize what ship it's attacking?" Rikku bounced from foot to foot. _

_"Fiends are stupid," Paine said, heading back for the elevator down into the ship. "Come on, let's get inside, and change our clothes..."_

_"Did you hear it trying to say something?" Yuna was still watching the fiend jet away, leaning down and patting Baralai reassuringly on the head. _

_"Fiend gibberish," Paine said harshly. "Come on, Yuna."_

_"They didn't understand?" Baralai turned his head and looked up at Gippal, who was still on the retreating Rikku's shoulders. _

_"Apparently not," Gippal replied as best as he could._

_"Bye Ghiki," Rikku whispered in his ear as they neared the elevator. "I'll see you again soon, k?"_

_Gippal couldn't help himself. He put his arms around Rikku's neck and rubbed his face against hers affectionately. "Just call me," he said to her. _

_His vision spun and blurred._

_------_

_------_

When Gippal awoke, he was laying flat on his back. Of course, he was also at the bottom of a pile of bodies that included Nooj and Baralai as well. "Get off," he muttered, trying to haul himself to a more suitable position.

"Whoa," Baralai said as he rolled off of Gippal, landing in a sitting position and cradling his head in his hands. "I must be dreaming."

"What, that you were stuck inside an ugly-ass dog's body?" Gippal smirked as he dislodged his foot from Nooj's knees, fixing his shirt that had gotten twisted around in all sorts of random directions.

"So that's the power of this sphere," Nooj said to no one in particular, grimacing a little as he leaned forward and peered at the sphere again. It seemed so harmless resting in its box.

"Yeah, so now you guys know I'm not crazy," Gippal said, lying back down on the floor. "Though, Lai, what were you doing here?"

"I wanted to tell you guys that I found more information about that plague," Baralai said, lifting his head out of his hands. "But when I got here, you two were gone but I could hear your voices from the sphere. I thought you might have been in trouble."

"Funny how that works," Gippal said, folding his arms under his head. "Yuna says she wants to try it, and Lai just so happens to touch the sphere at the same moment..."

"How is it possible?" Baralai looked over at Gippal like he had all the answers.

"Damned if I know," Gippal replied, smirking. "Nooj seemed to enjoy it though."

"What did you find?" Nooj asked, looking over to Baralai and changing the subject suddenly.

"Huh?" Baralai looked confused for a moment, then shook his head. "Oh, just... it was a disease that they couldn't find the source for, no bacteria or virus or anything. They called it the Black Death, and it killed over half the population of Spira before the war between Zanarkand and Bevelle. It was part of what actually started the war... they found the source, a tree that emitted negative energy, and sealed away its power in a machine designed to keep it contained. Of course, Bevelle put that powerful machine under the city, and Zanarkand thought they were going to find a way to use the power of the tree again..."

"So that's Vegnagun," Gippal said as Baralai paused, "Right?"

"It makes sense," Nooj said, still eyeing the dress sphere. "Vegnagun was a huge weapon that thrived off negative energy, and it had to get that from some source. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed."

"But if Vegnagun was the thing keeping the power of the tree stagnant," Gippal said, looking back and forth between the two, "what's going to happen now that Vegnagun's been destroyed?"

"Maybe the Black Death will come back," Nooj said flatly, like he wouldn't really mind if it did or not.

"Maybe that's what that haze... fiend... whatever it was... was," Gippal said in a moment of epiphany. "Because that's what I felt from it that first time... death. That's all I can describe it as."

"Was it black?" Baralai asked in all sincerity.

"Yes," Gippal answered.

Baralai looked horrified. "The Black Death..."

"No need to jump to conclusions so quickly," Nooj interrupted, standing up now and walking over to the window. "We can't be certain, and should find out more before we go assuming anything."

"So we're going to Macalania still?" Gippal sat back up now, looking between the others.

Nooj looked back at him, nodding. "I'd say that'd be the best course of action."


	5. Chapter Five

"Have you guys been here before?" Gippal looked around at the glowing trees of Macalania Woods with wide eyes.

"A few times, to visit Maester Seymour in Guadosalam," Baralai answered shyly, running his hand along the trunk of a large tree. "But they had said it was dying after Sin was defeated."

"The Guado," Nooj said unceremoniously, walking ahead just slightly. "They return to Guadosalam, peace is restored, and the Woods flourishes again."

"Or is it Vegnagun and the Black Death?" Gippal wondered out loud, reaching over to touch the tree that Baralai was admiring.

"It could be anything," Nooj answered with a nod. "Let's go to Guadosalam, and see if the Guado know anything."

Guadosalam didn't bring them much in the way of a conclusion about the situation. However, they did learn something interesting: many of the non-Guado who had taken up residence in Guadosalam had fallen strangely ill with fever and respiratory problems. Two had already died from it. This didn't sit well with the trio at all, especially not with what they had learned from the white sphere from Zanarkand.

And so they headed north toward Lake Macalania, the place where the sphere had pointed them. Not only that, but the Gullwings would be there soon as well and they longed to find out more about the situation with the dress sphere.

"There used to be a temple here," Baralai told the others as they left the Travel Agency and headed towards the lake in warm winter coats to protect them from the snowy elements. "But after Sin was defeated and the Fayth disappeared, it sunk into the lake. Ever since then, more and more fiends have been appearing, and people just don't travel here very often."

"It... sunk into the lake?" Gippal stepped up over a hill that overlooked the entire area. "Then what's that?"

The icy lake was laid out in front of them, glittering in the midday sun, but there was something striking rising out of the center.

It was a tree. A black, leafless tree, with gnarled branches and a thick, dusky haze around it rose from the very center of the lake and stretched toward the sky.

_Ghiki..._

"Ugh, not now!" Gippal put his palms to his temples, trying to force Rikku's voice out of his brain.

"What is it?" Baralai took Gippal's elbow, supporting him as he wavered.

"The dress sphere?" Nooj, too, helped steady Gippal with a hand on the shoulder.

"Why now... why?" Gippal fell to his knees in the snow. _Ghiki I'm scared, please..._

"Here." Nooj held out the sphere, covered in a plain cloth so he wouldn't touch it.

Gippal looked up at him.

Nooj smiled. That was a rare sight, indeed, but Gippal understood it and reached forward.

"Maybe by the time you're back, we'll have figured this out," Baralai added to Nooj's unspoken statement.

Gippal exhaled and placed his palms to the sphere.

_------_

_------_

_"Ghiki, I'm so glad to see you." Rikku picked Gippal up and slung him over her shoulder. _

_"I'm here, Rikku," Gippal said, even though he knew she couldn't understand him. He pressed his cheek against her chin to let her know that he was at least trying to comfort her. _

_"It was so scary," Rikku whispered to him, leaning her head against his side. "A remedy fixed it, but I felt like I had been hit with everything at once. We had to get out of there..."_

_Gippal looked up. They were in the Macalania travel agency. It was odd how the three of them must have missed the girls only by a few minutes. _

_"She'll be okay," came Paine's voice from the side. Gippal turned and looked. "She needs some rest, but Tidus is taking care of her."_

_"I'm so glad Tidus came back," Rikku said softly, more to Gippal than anyone else. "Yunie'd be really sad if he wasn't. Plus, he's been such a great help with spherehunting!"_

_"Whatever that was that hit us," Paine continued, looking out the window, "it was no ordinary fiend breath."_

_"Didn't it hit you?" Rikku leaned her back against the headboard of the bed she was sitting on, lifting Gippal up and putting him on her stomach. To appease her, Gippal curled into a little ball and let her pet him while he amused himself with flicking his tail back and forth. _

_"Sort of," Paine answered, turning and looking at Rikku and making eye contact with Gippal as she did so. "You guys got the most of it. I just felt a little nauseous."_

_"Poor Yunie," Rikku continued, and Gippal watched as her eyes fluttered closed. "She looked like... she couldn't breathe..."_

_"Get some rest; cuddle your monkey," Paine instructed, taking a few steps out of the room. _

_------_

_------_

_Gippal lost track of time, and he wasn't sure if he fell asleep or not, but he started to get worried about Nooj and Baralai just as he heard the chimes on the door ring to signal new customers. He heard Paine talking, then opened his eyes to see the door to the room creaking open. _

_Baralai's head peeked in, their eyes connecting. "Lai!" Gippal said, though still keeping his voice down so as to not wake Rikku._

_"That damn monkey of hers is so talkative," Paine said from the hallway. "What's going on?"_

_"Monkeys generally are," Nooj said about as flatly as he ever said anything as he, too, looked inside to get a glimpse of Rikku sleeping all cuddled up to Gippal. _

_"Did you guys find out anything?" Gippal wondered if Baralai and Nooj would be able to understand him now. _

_Nooj's eyes shifted over to Gippal and he winked. "That tree... is definitely the source for the fiends," he explained to Paine gently, and Gippal at the same time. "O'aka was telling us about you three going to investigate. Not a wise move."_

_"We tried to get close to it, since we saw the same haze from that thing that attacked the ship," Paine said in a low tone, "but something attacked Yuna and Rikku and paralyzed them, so they were unable to breathe. I managed to escape just barely... how did you two get so close?"_

_Baralai grinned lightly. "Sheer luck, I think," he answered, his eyes drifting over to Gippal. "We went when the haze was thinning. We believe it's not only the fiends, but something more dangerous as well."_

_"What're you guys doing here?" Rikku murmured, sitting up in the bed and taking Gippal with her. _

_"We came to investigate a... virus outbreak in Guadosalam," Baralai explained to both of them. _

_Rikku stood up, pulling Gippal up to her shoulders. "Virus?" She looked back and forth between Nooj and Baralai, then at Paine, then back at Baralai. "Where's Gippal? Aren't you three always together now?"_

_Baralai's eyes instantly flickered to the monkey on Rikku's shoulders. "She has no clue," Gippal said, trying to smile. _

_Baralai reached forward and scratched Gippal on top of his head. Gippal nuzzled lightly into Baralai's hand -- he couldn't help it! "Gippal went to Djose, I think, didn't he Nooj?" _

_"Yeah," Nooj said, his hand instinctively going to the pouch at his side where he carried the secret dress sphere. "We found a white sphere from a thousand years ago, and he went to Djose to analyze it, or something. Said he'd meet us back here, though."_

_"You guys are so full of shit," Gippal said, looking up at Baralai, who was still scratching his ears. "Why don't you just tell them?"_

_Baralai narrowed his eyes at Gippal just slightly. It gave Gippal the impression that the other two could understand him. "Where'd you get this little guy?" Baralai turned his eyes back on Rikku, though he still was petting Gippal. _

_"It's our Trainer dress sphere," Rikku explained, looking over and petting Gippal's back and tail. Gippal made an appreciative squeak. "We never used it when we were fighting against Vegnagun because we thought it was useless... but I like having him around. His name's Ghiki!"_

_"Gippal," Gippal said, as if to illustrate the point. _

_"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Gippal," Baralai said, not even realizing his mistake. _

_Rikku looked at him strangely. "Gippal?"  
_

_Baralai blinked. "I mean... Ghiki. Did I say Gippal?" He laughed nervously and put his hand up to fix that bandana of his. _

_"Nice going," Gippal snorted, climbing over to Rikku's other shoulder. _

_"You need to stop worrying about Gippal so much," Nooj covered smoothly, "I know he's been gone longer than he said, but he'll be fine. The guy can travel on his own just fine, you know."_

_Baralai shook his head. "Bet he'd be offended if he knew I accidentally called a monkey by his name."_

_Gippal put on his best imitation of a sneer and glared at Baralai. _

_"Let's go see how Yunie's doing!" Rikku hopped from foot to foot for a moment before taking off to go into the other room. She paused before entering, however, and pulled out her garment grid. "Sorry Ghiki, but you should go back. Thanks for making me feel better!" She pulled Gippal off her shoulder and gave him a kiss on his forehead before reaching a hand to her garment grid._

_Baralai cleared his throat. _

_Nooj's attention was brought back to the situation at hand. Gippal was glaring at him. If Rikku changed, Gippal would appear out of the sphere... and that would look very suspicious. Nooj, too, cleared his throat and spoke up. "Come on," he said to Baralai, "it's not polite to be around a lady when she's changing."_

_"That was lame, Nooj," Gippal said, smirking, though he could see the edges of his vision blurring. _

_"Yeah, let's go see if anyone knows anything about the virus," Baralai said then, taking Nooj by the elbow and leading him out of the room. _

_"They sure got skiddish," Rikku said. _

_Paine replied, but Gippal lost concentration as Rikku's spherechange went into effect. _

_------_

_------_

With a crash and a thud, Gippal found himself tangled up with something warm and covered with fabric, and he also found himself rolling in the snow quite rapidly. He hadn't come back into the world in a state of motion before; it was kind of nauseating. He clung to the object he was rolling with and clenched his eye shut until the moving stopped.

"Gippal?"

Gippal opened his eye, and realized he was face-to-face with Baralai. He laughed nervously. So that was the warm, fabric-covered thing he had been tangled up with. Right. "Um, sorry about that?"

"Don't worry about it." Baralai untangled himself from Gippal and stood up, brushing his clothes off, sending a shower of melting snow down toward the ground. "That was... really close."

Gippal couldn't help but wonder. "Why were we...?"

"Nooj handed me the sphere, and told me to run," Baralai explained. "Didn't want anyone to see... you know."

Gippal nodded, putting his hand over his eye in order to regain some sort of equilibrium. It was difficult to switch back and forth so often. "Thanks, Lai," he said when he finally didn't feel like he was going to vomit all over the pristine white snow.

"Like I said, don't worry about it," Baralai replied.

"Why didn't you guys tell them?"

"Because of something we found near the tree." Baralai put his hand on Gippal's arm, pulling him within whispering distance. "A layer of mud and rock under the ice, frozen by time. There were paw prints in it."

Gippal blinked. "...paw prints?"

"Two sets," Baralai continued in a whisper. "We broke through the ice to look at them better... we're lucky that this place is so frozen over... it must have happened quickly. Anyway, there were two sets and they looked really rather like tracks belonging to a dog and a monkey."

"A dog..." Gippal swallowed. "And a monkey?"

"Two animals that don't travel together ever under normal conditions," Baralai informed him, "and much less likely here, of all places. They stretched on, in the direction of the tree."

"But wait," Gippal said, making a connection and speaking quickly under his breath. "That sphere said they sent specially trained animals to deal with the tree before. Maybe that was them?"

"Sacred animals," Baralai echoed. "Two of which happened to be a dog and a monkey."

"So wait, man, are you saying that..." Gippal trailed off, staring at Baralai.

"That's what we think. The sphere we have is the sphere which... like, the dress sphere for the sacred animals." Baralai looked nervously back toward the travel agency. "Which makes perfect sense if they have the _Trainer_ dress sphere."

"So, let me get this straight," Gippal said, closing his eye in mild confusion. "When I touch that sphere, I turn into a thousand-year old trained sacred _monkey_."

Baralai blinked. "Now that you say it like that," he said, putting his hands to his temples, "it all really does sound rather absurd."


	6. Chapter Six

The virus in Guadosalam didn't become big news until the multi-millionaire creator of the game Sphere Break caught it and was confined to his place of residence.

Once Rin caught the disease, people started to panic. This made way for the virus to spread even further as it fed on fear and chaos. The people of Spira caught the virus in rapidly growing numbers, and the mysterious death toll that started to accumulate over the next week only caused more confusion among the people.

And all the while, the black haze over Macalania grew darker.

_------_

_------_

The Crimson Squad, on the other hand, was having an entirely different problem. Its name was Rikku.

"The girl has become entirely too attached to you," Nooj said as he leaned against the doorway of the Machine Faction headquarters in Djose. "It's distracting and we're not getting anywhere."

Gippal threw his hands in the air defensively. "What am I supposed to do?" Even now, he could hear her. _Ghiki..._ "I can't just ignore her, or I'll drive myself crazy. You guys saw what happened the other night... I don't want anything to happen like that ever again."

Baralai rubbed the bruise on his jaw absentmindedly. He had forgiven Gippal instantly for the hard right hook in the middle of the night, especially since he had been driven "spherecrazy", as Nooj had deemed it. They couldn't figure out exactly what it was that kept driving Gippal back to the sphere night after night after night, even to be gone for almost two days once. And once he was back, he was tired and lethargic, practically dead on his feet.

"We've got to figure out how to stop this," Nooj said, interrupting the silence that had grown between them. "There are no answers to be had in any of these spheres, and more and more people are falling ill--"

"Thanks for the reminder," Gippal said, resting his forehead in his palms. He had expressed his own guilt over the slowness of their progress many times, since he could not control his urges to enter the sphere and this caused problems whenever they were brainstorming or spherehunting. And it wasn't as though Rikku had been much help herself, anyway.

"There are no other spheres?" Baralai stood very quietly, trying desperately to figure out a way to fix the situation.

"Nothing else useful," Gippal answered as best as he could. "Just the White Sphere, the Historical Spheres, and the dress sphere."

"Gippal?"

Gippal looked over at Nooj. "What?"

"Have you tried playing back the dress sphere?" Nooj chewed slightly on his mechanical knuckle.

Gippal blinked. "Can dress spheres even _be_ played back?"

"It couldn't hurt to try, could it?" Baralai reached into the pouch where he now carried the dress sphere and removed it, watching it glow with a soft yellow light.

"Well, put it in the reader," Gippal said, standing up and crossing the room to the machina sphere reader that had gotten more use since the Vegnagun incident than in the previous years of its existence.

Baralai, of course, followed Gippal's instructions. He put the sphere into the reader and removed the white cloth that covered it. Almost immediately, the sphere reader sprang to life.

**title: totem sphere**

**age: approximately 1020 years**

**recorded: zanarkand vicinity**

**play...?...?**

The three men looked at each other. Finally, Gippal reached forward and clicked the play button.

**the fact that this sphere is being played indicates that there is a problem.**

**x-death is back, and the black death spreads again.**

**we knew it could not be contained forever.**

Gippal inhaled sharply. "No image, just text."

"It's like an old-fashioned BBS sphere," Nooj mused.

"Is that all, or is there more?" Baralai leaned forward, looking at the sphere and its contents. The cursor on the message blinked expectantly at him, before the three lines flashed and disappeared, to be replaced with more scrolling text.

**this is the totem sphere. it contains the power and memory of the three sacred creatures.**

**it is the only way we knew of to get to the tree. humans are too weak.**

**as a failsafe, however, not just anyone can use this sphere.**

**the three were blessed by the holy ones to be reborn when there would be a time of crisis. **

**if there are three, proceed to the fire forest and the tree of three trunks. **

**if you are true, you will be once again granted your sacred relics.**

"The fire forest," Gippal wondered out loud.

"Kilika, I bet," Baralai replied, biting his lower lip. "The forest outside the temple. Fire fiends live there, and the area... well, Ifrit thrived there, so it only makes sense."

"Reborn?" Nooj's voice was unnecessarily harsh. "This sounds like a prophecy out of a cheesy fantasy novel."

"But it's real," Baralai countered, pointing to the sphere, "written right there."

"Things don't get reborn," Gippal added, standing up and looking at the other two, "but it couldn't hurt to head out to Kilika and have a look, could it?"


	7. Chapter Seven

"The tree of three trunks," Gippal said, looking up at the seemingly endless expanse of forest. He was still a bit disoriented from having just re-emerged from the dress sphere after another pointless incident with Rikku. The Gullwings, at least, were taking care of the physical problems caused by the virus and keeping people from entering the Macalania area. That was helpful, Gippal supposed.

"Might as well start looking," Baralai added, starting down the pathway through the woods.

They walked for a few minutes, and Gippal wound his way through the brush looking off the path for the tree. Something that important wouldn't be right on the pathway, would it? He found that he had to climb up into the trees and swing from branch to branch at times since the brush was so thick. The other two laughed and made monkey jokes, which, oddly enough, Gippal wasn't taking so much offense to anymore. Maybe it was because of all the time he had spent as a monkey.

_Ghiki..._

The voice was so soft and distant that it confused Gippal. Normally Rikku was louder than that. It was, however, just enough to startle Gippal into fall off the branch he was currently sitting on.

"Damnit, Rikku, not now," Gippal muttered as he picked himself up out of the leaves.

"Did you guys hear that?" Baralai asked, looking around in mild confusion.

Gippal opened his mouth and started to speak, "I just fell out of a tree--"

"Not that," Baralai replied, looking at Nooj now. "Did you hear it?"

Nooj simply nodded.

"What was it?" Gippal pulled himself out of the underbrush completely, returning to the path that the other two stood on.

"Someone calling 'Kogoro'," Baralai responded nonchalantly, as though everyone would have heard it.

"That's not what I heard," Nooj said flatly, turning and looking oddly at Baralai.

Gippal smirked. "Let me guess; you heard someone calling 'Flurry', right?"

Nooj blinked. "How'd you know?"

"I didn't," Gippal replied, "but I know I heard someone calling 'Ghiki'. It seems the girls are calling us."

"Is that what it is?" Baralai didn't look so convinced, but he reached into the pouch and removed the dress sphere covered in the white cloth. "They do have bad timing, don't they?--"

"Wait," Nooj said, and it only then occurred to Gippal that the man had been moving away from him. "Look at this."

Gippal instantly bounded over to Nooj, and Baralai followed.

There is was. A tree with three trunks, split from the bottom and twining around each other in an eccentric pattern. It was hunched over and shriveled, looking older than most of the other trees in the forest, but it definitely was still alive and also had three trunks.

"Think that's it?" Gippal reached out and ran his fingers along the bark.

_GHIKI._

"Whoa!" Gippal jumped back, surprised.

"Guys," came Baralai's unsure voice.

The other two turned to him. The dress sphere was glowing brightly in his hands and pulsating with a white light so strong that Gippal had to shield his eye.

"You two ready to find out what this is all about?" Nooj asked as he looked down at Gippal.

"Hell yeah," Gippal replied, hauling himself to his feet. The three of them huddled around the sphere, squinting their eyes to be able to see past the brilliant light. "Let's do it," he finished, positioning one palm above the sphere while he held Baralai's elbow with the other. He felt Nooj's mechanical hand gripping his own elbow, and felt the light grazing of Nooj's fingers on his own.

Baralai looked up at the other two and nodded, placing his palm similarly to the other two with their fingers all interlocked. He smiled and inhaled deeply, then guided their hands downward.

Three palms simultaneously connected with the sphere, and the three men disappeared.

_------_

_------_

"Watch him."

"Where are you going?"

"To scout the area. Make sure he's warm."

"Don't go too far."

Gippal felt very, very cold, but very warm at the same time. He realized he was shivering. The last thing he remembered was a tree... and the sphere... and locking hands with the guys and touching the Totem Sphere.

And after that, there was nothing but cold.

He felt hands in his hair, and then something wrap around him. He had touched the sphere... so did that mean he had been transported to Rikku? Was this Rikku cuddling him again? No... no, it didn't feel like that. And the voices didn't match up.

He smelled something burning.

Nooj and Baralai had been there. Were they still here? Had those voices belonged to the two of them? And why the hell was it so cold?

"Hey, you coming around?"

Gippal blinked, looking up. His vision was strangely blurry, like half of his vision was being obstructed, and he shook his head dizzily. "...'Lai?"

"Hey," Baralai said, and Gippal realized that he was wrapped up in Baralai's arms, "good to see you awake."

"What... happened?"

"We're not sure," Baralai replied with a soft smile, running his fingers along Gippal's eyepatch at his forehead, "but you've been unconscious since we got here... about ten hours ago or so."

"Got... here?" Gippal was confused, and his eyes were still blurry. "Where are we?"

"We can't figure it out," Baralai explained, sighing softly and shifting his body against Gippal's. "A forest of some sort, but not the one in Kilika. We're knee-deep in snow and the temperature is below freezing. Nooj is scouting the area right now, but niether of us recognize it."

"So that's why it's so cold..." Gippal shifted uncomfortably. "Why are you holding me?"

"You were turning blue," Baralai said matter-of-factly. "Shivering, shaking, freezing. You weren't waking up. We were worried, so we're doing our best to keep you warm."

"Desert boys," came another voice -- Nooj's. "Need to watch out for them in the low temperature. Though it's good to see you awake, Gippal."

"Ugh," Gippal replied wholeheartedly, nuzzling his nose back into Baralai's shoulder. "I hate the cold. And I can't see straight."

Baralai's form stiffened slightly around Gippal. "Do you think--?"

"It's possible. Check and see," Nooj replied.

Gippal was confused. "What's possible?"

"You might have your eye back," Nooj answered flatly.

That was officially the most ridiculous thing Gippal had heard in years. "My _eye_ back? Man, it's been gone for five years..."

"Weirder things have happened," Baralai said with an odd smirk on his face. "Can we have a look?"

Gippal was increasingly aware of Baralai's fingers running along the edge of his eyepatch. Finally, he sighed. "Okay, go ahead, it's ugly though -- don't blame me if you have nightmares."

Baralai's soft fingers pressed lightly against Gippal's skin, pushing the eyepatch back over the ridge of Gippal's right eye. Gippal, of course, closed his eyes firmly to try to hide from the prying stares of his two closest friends.

That was, until he heard a soft gasp from Baralai, followed by, "Gippal... open your eyes."

Eyes?

Gippal did as he was told. He felt strange, his vision was odd... but it focused. His sight was still a little blurry from disuse, but the fact was that he was seeing now, and seeing with depth.

He had two eyes.

"Two handsome green eyes," Baralai assured him.

"How is this possible?" Gippal wondered out loud.

"We're not sure of that either," Baralai answered, but pulled back the hood of the robe he was wearing. Gippal's eyes widened -- Baralai's normally shock-white hair seemed to be gone now, replaced by a full head of dark brown, almost black hair. It completely changed Lai's appearance, making his chocolate brown eyes even more striking against his olive skin. "But probably the same thing that caused this."

"And this," Nooj said, sitting down between them and what appeared to be a crackling fire. The first stunning thing was that Nooj was sitting on the ground. The second was that he had gotten there rather nimbly. Of course, it made sense when Gippal forced his eyes to focus and he saw that Nooj, in fact, had an entirely human body. The machina arm and leg were gone, replaced with two completely human limbs with full joint capabilities.

"Nooj," Gippal mouthed, sitting up and sliding over in the snow to the other man. "That's... you have... how?"

"What Lai said," Nooj replied, "we're not sure. As far as I can tell, we were all knocked unconscious as soon as the sphere dropped us. Lai and I woke up at about the same time, and just found ourselves... like this."

"All the marks on our bodies have been erased," Baralai said, looking at Gippal expectantly. "Have any scars? Check them."

"I... there's one..." Gippal looked down, and then suddenly realized that he was curled up under Baralai's New Yevon robe. That was unnerving. He reached underneath it and pulled aside the material of his shirt under his shoulder armor. "I've got quite a few, but this is the big one--"

Gippal stared at his skin. Not only were goosebumps already developing from being exposed to the freezing cold air, but there was supposed to be a football shaped scar there, on his shoulder. From a bullet. From when Nooj shot him.

There was _supposed_ to be a scar there.

Gippal swallowed, choking on his words. "It's... it's gone." He pulled the material of his shirt back up -- he was getting cold -- and immediately pulled his gloves off his hands. The cuts and scars from all those years working with machina that lined his hands... they were gone too.

Gippal looked up and met Baralai's gaze across the snow.

Baralai smiled. "Past imperfections..."

Gippal looked over at Nooj, who, strangely, was also smiling as he added, "...erased."


	8. Chapter Eight

"There are three paths," Nooj informed them as they huddled around the fire. When Gippal had asked where the fire came from, he got the same response as when he asked the same question about his eye, or Nooj's new human limbs. _It was just there._ "They lead in completely opposite directions, with no real landmarks in sight."

"How are we supposed to know which way to go?" Gippal's teeth chattered slightly as he said this; he really had not been built to handle the cold.

"Maybe each of us is supposed to take a different path," Baralai suggested as he huddled closer to Gippal. Gippal was admittedly very glad for Lai's willingness to share body heat.

"I don't like that idea," Nooj informed them. "Not only is Gippal really weak, but we're in an unfamiliar place. Separating would not be a good idea."

"Plus... this place freaks me out." Gippal nodded and coughed as if to prove his point.

"What do you think happened to us?" Lai's hold on Gippal's shoulders tightened after that cough.

"Maybe we died and went to purgatory," Gippal muttered into Baralai's shoulder.

"Maybe we really were reborn," Nooj said as he pulled his knees to his chest, "like the _prophecy_ said."

Gippal couldn't believe he had just heard that. "When did you start believing in that?"

Nooj regarded him steadily. "Since it gave me my body back."

"Convincing."

"Maybe we should just choose one of the paths," Baralai said almost randomly. "Go down it together and see where it goes."

"Which one, though?" Gippal felt another shiver rock his body. He didn't want to leave the warmth of the fire ever.

"They all look pretty much the same," Nooj said, turning his head and looking at the one nearest to them. "I don't know if there's a difference."

"Maybe we should ask the _prophecy_ sphere," Gippal suggested.

Baralai blinked. "You know... that's a good idea. It came through with us; that must have been for a reason." He pulled out the sphere and looked for the play button, and it projected another message in a low flickering light.

**the rightmost path leads to Industria**

**the leftmost to the hopeless**

**and the center travels with no companion but the cold**

"Industria," Baralai mused. "It's capitalized. It sounds like a city."

"Industry... an advanced city," Nooj added. "At least we'll be able to find out where we are."

"But there aren't any industrial cities left in the world," Gippal said, looking up at the other two as they stood near the entrance to the first path. "The closest thing to an industrial city is Bevelle--"

"Zanarkand," Baralai corrected him gently. "It was a major city a thousand years ago... which is when this sphere is from."

"So," Nooj said, turning and looking down the path. "You're saying that you think we're near Zanarkand?"

"It really would make sense," Baralai replied, following Nooj's gaze. "Gagazet is the coldest place in the world, maybe we're somewhere in the mountains near there."

"But the question is _how did we get here_?" Gippal hauled himself to his feet as gracefully as he could with his body feeling half-frozen.

"The sphere, obviously," Nooj informed him.

"Hello?" Gippal spread his arms, indicating downward at his body. "Whenever we use that sphere, we turn into animals. Do I look like a monkey??"

The other two looked at him.

"You don't want me to answer that," Nooj finally replied with a very slight hint of a snicker.

Baralai laughed easily, reaching over and taking Gippal by the elbow. "Come on," he said with a smile, letting Gippal lean on him to traverse the knee-deep snow, "once we get to this city, we can get inside someplace warm."

_------_

_------_

Gippal sighed as the snow soaked his legs solidly up to his knees for the one-hundred-fifty-sixth time. He had been counting the steps, hoping that by the time he reached a certain number the snow would go away. It had started at fifty, then was bumped up to a hundred. By now it was at two hundred and he wasn't sure how much longer he would be able to go on. The path seemed to stretch on farther than his eye -- eyes -- could see. It was impossible to forsee the end of it.

He could feel the water soaking his feet through the boots and socks that were designed to keep the sand out, not the water. The thick cloth socks he wore were dripping wet with cold water that drizzled between his toes, seeming to freeze his toenails to the point of falling off. He wished his feet would just freeze so he could stop feeling the wetness dripping with every step, the ice cold water sneaking its way up his leg as his socks and pants soaked up more and more snow as it melted around his desert-conditioned body.

It had reached his left knee now. His right knee was still relatively dry, and he wasn't exactly sure how. He loathed the thought of the freezing wetness reaching his thighs and hips and other more important parts.

As he was thinking about how much his situation sucked, he lost track of his feet and his feet lost track of the ground. He fell down and forward toward the snow, stopped from certain doom only by Baralai's arms which closed around him at the last second to save him from what would quite likely have been his death. Well, maybe not, but Gippal would have rather died than have been soaked with ice cold water from head to toe. He hated the cold.

Even the trees were frozen, a thick layer of ice covering them so they glinted silver in the intermittent sunlight. It must have been growing colder the farther they went down the path since the ice layer on the trees grew thicker and thicker until the original bark was no longer visible. The leaves were covered with ice, appearing almost metallic in the shifting shadows. It no longer looked like they were in a forest, but in a field of oddly-scattered metallic pillars.

And it was getting darker.

"I don't like this," Baralai said nervously, looking up at the sky which was being covered by the icy leaves.

"Me either," Gippal agreed, choosing not to look up and focusing only on getting his legs underneath of him. "We should go back."

"We're getting closer to somewhere," Nooj said, rubbing at his formerly-robotic shoulder. "I can feel it."

"Feel it?" Baralai looked down now, and over to Nooj uncertainly.

"Yeah," Nooj replied distractedly. "I can feel something... something warm."

"I think the cold's getting to you," Gippal said under his breath, trying his best to smirk but his lips not wanting to cooperate enough to do it properly.

"No," Nooj answered, turning his eyes back down the path. "We have to keep going."

"Okay," Baralai acquiesced. "Come on Gippal."

_------_

_------_

Gippal didn't know what Nooj was talking about. Nothing got warmer. He couldn't feel anything. He still hadn't lost feeling in his feet like he had been hoping for, but he had gotten used to the feeling of icy cold water running down his shins in rivers. He could feel every meandering of the tiny streams of water dripping from the soaked material of his socks from the time they fell at his knees as they ran down his legs collecting water and finally cascaded in something which felt like a waterfall of ice on his ankles. The puddle in his boots spread, freezing his toes, and yet he could still somehow feel every last bit of it. It was depressing and distracting at the same time.

He couldn't figure out why his legs hadn't frozen yet. His skin hadn't dropped to the temperature of the water that cascaded down it, which meant that every little rush of water still sent a shiver down the bone along all the nerves. Gippal had never quite wanted to die before, but this was as close as he had ever gotten.

"A clearing," came Baralai's voice into the darkness which had descended across Gippal's entire world. As the increasingly metallic looking leaves covered more and more of the sky and the ground continued to freeze until they were surrounded by nothing but a matte shine of ice, Gippal's vision had darkened entirely, and eventually it also spread to his hearing so the only thing he could hear was the crunch of ice underneath his feet with every step he took to break through the iced-over snow.

Gippal looked up and blinked his eyes until his vision focused. It was, in fact, a clearing. A wide open circular space laid before them, but it was hardly clear. If anything, there almost seemed to be a haze draped across it, making it impossible to see. The trees and ground were nothing but silver, intermittent light making them flicker like LED lights on a machine. It made Gippal's spine freeze.

The realization hit him as he twitched his toes to shake off the layer of ice that had built up there.

"Industria," he thought he said, but he couldn't hear his own voice. "The trees... turned to machines..."

"Nature... what happened to it?" Baralai's voice sounded desperate, and he closed his hands around Gippal's elbow.

Gippal was all for machinery, but this was just creepy. The trees still looked vaguely tree-like, but they were so thickly coated in ice that they were no longer natural. They were machines... and they had entirely replaced nature. Even the ground. It was all metallic, so thickly coated in ice that there was nothing left of the life that was originally present.

He looked up at the tops of the trees, gazing at them, confused. How had this happened? How had ice and cold turned nature into machine?

Gippal felt motion next to him and he looked over at Baralai, who was now looking behind them, toward the other side of the clearing. "There's no continuation of the path," he said, his voice shaking. "There's no city... this is it."

"What?" Gippal turned around, his eyes tracing the perfect circle of the clearing they were in. There was no continuation. No city. This was Industria...

"Nooj...?"

Baralai's voice rang through the clearing. The realization struck Gippal a second and a half after Baralai's voice stopped echoing. "Nooj... where are you?"

No answer.

"Nooj!" Baralai shouted, his voice reverberating off the metallic trees. "Nooj!!"

"Cred," Gippal muttered, finding his knees shaking uncontrollably. He couldn't tell if it was from fear or cold or an ironic combination of the two. "This... isn't funny Nooj." He paused, turning and shouting back at the path angrily, "_Come out you bastard!!_"

The only response was Gippal's own voice echoing in an endless circle through the metallic perversion of nature.


	9. Chapter Nine

"I can't take any more cold," Gippal murmured into Baralai's shoulder as they came back to the initial clearing. "I can't handle it. My legs are going to fall off."

"Then we'll take the leftmost path," Baralai said, his own voice cracking a little. Losing Nooj had unnerved both of them... it wasn't like him to wander off, and the worst part of it all was that an extensive search of the area had turned up nothing. No sign of him. The footsteps in the snow simply ended with no trail, like he had been picked up from the sky.

"To the hopeless..."

"People might be down there. Because the hopeless would be people, wouldn't it?" Baralai's arm was around Gippal's midsection as he led them to the third path. It looked no different than the last one at the start, but it wasn't possible to see a long distance down it.

"Yeah, just like we thought Industria would be a city," Gippal pointed out a little bit bitterly. Why couldn't he just go home, back to Bikanel, back to the desert?

"It doesn't matter. We have to find Nooj." With that, Baralai stepped forward down the hopeless path.

_------_

_------_

"Gippal?"

Gippal looked over at Baralai, who he was half-leaning on still even though the snow on the path was now barely up to their ankles. "Yeah?"

"Do you... hear that?"

Gippal blinked... both of his eyes. "Hear what?"

"Nevermind, then." Baralai lowered his head.

_------_

_------_

"Are you _sure_ you don't hear that?"

Gippal shook his head and supported Baralai with his arm. The snow had nearly gone from the ground, even though ice still hung off the trees. It wasn't so cold anymore, but watching Lai's deterioration was far more chilling than the frozen water on his legs. "No, Lai. I don't hear anything." Except his breathing. It was very difficult to not hear Baralai's breathing, it was growing so laboured and strained.

Baralai lowered his head, coughing drily. "Why...?"

_------_

_------_

"Hopeless..."

Gippal stopped walking, putting his arms around Baralai. He tangled his fingers in the other's newly dark brown hair, shushing him gently. "It's okay, Lai. Come on."

Baralai buried his face in Gippal's shoulder. "No... I can hear them... they're crying to me..."

"Snap out of it, Lai. We have to find Nooj."

"I... can't... I hear him too... his voice... he's with them..."

"What?" Gippal pulled back off his embrace of Baralai, but was shocked at the look of abject horror on the other's face.

"The voice... everyone... they're crying."

_------_

_------_

"I'm sorry."

"What, Lai?"

"I don't know where you are."

"Lai... you're scaring me."

"I can't help you, I can't save you... I can't see you..."

"No, Lai, stop it."

"Stop... stop!!"

"_Baralai_!!"


	10. Chapter Ten

"Nooj."

"Lai."

"Guys."

"Rikku."

"...anybody?"

Gippal's voice didn't even echo. He couldn't even hear himself.

It was so cold. There was no snow, just ice. The ground was frozen, the trees were frozen, and Gippal was the only thing moving. There wasn't even wind, or the crunch of ice crystals under his feet. Just silence and his own breath which froze in the air in front of him and dropped in silent crystals to the ground.

His footsteps were silent.

There was no life. Everything was dead around him, even the air. Nothing moved, nothing breathed, nothing made a sound. He was utterly alone.

Gippal's only companion was the utter cold, which surrounded him and held him in its clutches, forcing him to shake uncontrollably with every step he took.

That was only until his shaking stopped. He could feel the cold creeping down his arms and through his shoulders. He couldn't even blink his eyes. It was like being taken over by a completely separate entity which sought to claim his entire body.

He had given up. He wanted to die out there, wanted to die and join the hopeless who had spoken to Baralai and caused him to disappear off into the thick forest trees, nearly dragging Gippal with him. Gippal wished he hadn't let go. He should have held onto Baralai, should have clinged to him as though their lives depended on it.

Their lives had depended on it. Now Lai was lost, and Nooj was lost, and Gippal was losing himself too.

_------_

_------_

"I have to keep going," Gippal said to no one but the cold entity that was creeping through his body. "I have to keep walking. I have to find them."

It was a devastatingly humbling feeling to not even hear his own voice, but know he was talking. He had to keep talking. It took his mind off the cold, forced him to keep trudging forward through the icy path.

"I have... to find them..."

The path was narrowing around him. In a few steps it would be barely wide enough for his two feet to be side by side. It was closing around him, the icy trees brushing their icy leaves against his hair and ears as he walked by them. The trunks scraped against his mostly frozen arms, but didn't make a sound. The leaves shifted as he walked underneath them, but they did not make a sound either. One even dropped to the frozen ground and shattered, but did so in utter silence.

Gippal's only companion was the cold.

_------_

_------_

He stared at the massive tree before him. Its three trunks intertwined around each other, and Gippal forced his frozen eyelids to blink. Icy eyelashes fell as he did this, dropping down and sliding along his chest before reaching the ground. It happened in utter silence, of course.

"G...Guys..." His throat was frozen. He could hardly speak the words, if he was even speaking at all. He had lost track of whether his voice worked, especially since he couldn't hear himself.

Gippal reached his hand forward, slowly and steadily. His fingers were so frozen that they couldn't even shake anymore.

He touched the tree, and suddenly he heard something for the first time in what felt like days.

"_Ghiki_..."

_------_

_------_

Ghiki couldn't control the urge to climb. Something in him forced his body to work, to ascend the triple-trunked tree, to climb on the branches that were frozen beneath him. The driving force was the voice calling his name, warm and inviting, pulling him upward. Ghiki's hands worked surprisingly well for being frozen, and he was surprised at his ability to climb the huge tree, jumping from branch upward to branch.

All the time, the voice was encouraging him, drawing him skyward. He felt like he was dying and ascending to some sort of heavenly plane, if he believed in such a thing. Maybe he had been wrong all this time. Maybe the religious people were right, maybe he was going to heaven.

Heaven was a really tall, majestic, frozen tree.

It sounded great to him.

A flurry of wings descended from the sky suddenly. Ghiki felt feathers close around him, and he was warm again. Everything changed. He could feel his entire body now, and it was working and functioning and wonderful. The warmth of the feathers and the wings was nothing compared to the recognition he felt and understood from the creature which had grabbed him and lifted him upward to the clouds, carrying him away from the frozen waste below.


	11. Chapter Eleven

"Ghiki!"

Kogoro's voice was welcomed to Ghiki. After what had seemed like hours, Ghiki had finally found himself back on the ground again. He swiped his paw upwards at Flurry as the bird sailed above his head, but he quickly dodged it and sailed off to land on a nearby tree root that stuck out of the ground ominously. As soon as Ghiki got his footing on the ground, he was ambushed by Kogoro from behind, knocking him over. "Kogoro," he said, laughing as he rolled onto his back. "It has been too long."

"More than a thousand years," Flurry informed them, preening.

"We were getting worried about you," Kogoro said, pawing at Ghiki's ears, "we didn't think your host was going to make it."

"I was worried there for a while too," Ghiki admitted, climbing up on Kogoro's back and hanging around his neck. "He's from the hot place, so I worried he would die of chill."

"Especially after Kogoro-host left him," Flurry muttered, still preening.

"Of all the people to get stuck with as a host," Ghiki replied, swinging back up to straddle Kogoro's back after grabbing a pawful of snow, "I had to get the snowpansy."

"Hey," Kogoro protested, turning his head to try to look up at Ghiki, "don't make fun of these hosts. At least they survived the remaking... unlike those last unfortunate souls who wandered here."

"Messy," Flurry said, fluttering his wings and shaking out a few loose feathers. "Glad we didn't have to find new hosts."

"We have the Shuyin to thank for this, you know. Without what he did to them, these guys might've broken under us." Kogoro kicked some snow up in the air behind his hind legs.

"Yeah, yeah, Shuyin," Ghiki said, tossing the pawful of snow at Flurry. "He's also the one who broke the Vegnagun."

"It's humans in general," Flurry muttered, getting hit with the snow and giving Ghiki a glare before preening his newly-wet left wing. "They forgot what they built the Vegnagun for, and now they've destroyed it and they're going to have to build another one."

"You're always so negative," Kogoro barked harshly. "This time, maybe we can stop it for good."

"Tch," Flurry enunciated, spitting out a few feathers. "How do you think we're going to do that?"

"There's got to be a way," Kogoro replied, pouting as he sat back on his haunches.

"Well, we do have our hosts," Ghiki piped up, sitting down on the top of Kogoro's head. "They know things. This one knows a lot about machinery and how to build them."

"This one knows magic, and faith," Kogoro agreed, then looked over at Flurry.

Flurry looked at them. "He knows darkness... and light."

The three of them paused, looking at each other.

"...or maybe we'll have to come up with something on our own," Ghiki finally said, smirking as much as his monkey features would allow. "I'm not sure I'd want to trust the fate of the world in their hands, anyway."

_------_

_------_

Kogoro bounded through the snow, carrying Ghiki on his back. "Do you think we can talk to our hosts?" Ghiki wondered out loud.

"Why would you want to do something like that?" Kogoro asked, looking up as Flurry elevated himself above the trees.

"I'm worried that they're confused," Ghiki replied. "You know, suddenly being pushed back after the transformation and all."

"Well, that was the point, wasn't it?" Kogoro leapt over a large tree root that stuck out over the snow. "To drive them crazy so that we could take over."

"So that's why?" Ghiki chuckled. "I always wondered why they had to go through the whole trial thing."

"Yes, it's to drive the dominant_ human_ personalities into submission, until we could take control of their bodies and their life force."

_Life force._

"So we're really just using them," Ghiki observed, sighing slightly. He felt a little guilty.

"We have to," Kogoro assured him gently, "or else X-Death would dominate the world again."

"Why don't we just let it?" Ghiki looked up at the sky, trying to spot Flurry. "I mean, it would be a lot less hassle than us having to be reborn every thousand years."

"This will be the last time," Kogoro said, stopping as they neared a clearing. "We have to finish X-Death this time. We can't keep doing this, the system won't work forever."

_I want my life back._

"Do you hear that?" Ghiki jumped off Kogoro's back, landing on his hind legs in the snow.

"Hear what?"

"My host is talking to me," Ghiki replied sadly.

"You're nuts," Flurry announced, settling down in front of them. "The humans can't talk to us. They're in submission."

"No." Ghiki shook his head. "I can hear him."

_Tell me what is going on!_

"Yours is a fiery one," Kogoro said, pawing at Ghiki's shoulder affectionately. "Figures even submission wouldn't quiet him permanently."

"Irritating," Flurry added.

"Quiet," Ghiki responded with a pout. He actually liked his host; a rather lot, in fact. The guy had survived in conditions that should have killed him -- Ghiki didn't even understand how it had been possible. He should have frozen to death after the first couple of hours in the icy cold. It was amazing he had gotten as far as he had.

"We have to get our relics," Kogoro reminded them, completely ignoring Ghiki's request for silence.

"They're still in the tree," Flurry replied, preening a little more. "I went ahead and checked. Should be no problem."

_------_

_------_

_Guys? Guys!? It's me, Gippal, please, you've got to be able to hear me. _

_I can hear them -- myself! -- talking, I can feel myself moving, but I can't control it; I can't do anything. I'm powerless, even lost to my own body._

_Is this death? Have I been reincarnated? Is this what it feels like?_

_No. No, I would remember dying. I'd know. I haven't died... this is still my body, damnit. It's been taken away from me!_

_**Gippal, calm down.**_

_Hello?_

_**You have nothing to fear. **_

_Who are you? Whose voice is that? Nooj?_

_**Not Nooj. Not Baralai either. Both.**_

_Both?_

_**You have to trust them. Come to us, be with us, let them take care of it.**_

_We're going to die. The virus is going to get to us. _

_**Not to us. To you, maybe, if you don't let go. **_

_But... but... they've stolen my life from me..._

_**It's for the good of the world. **_

_**Your -- our! -- sacrifice is worth it. **_

_I'm not ready to die. _

_**Speak for yourself. **_

_How could this have happened?_

_**You are the one who bonded so closely to the sphere. You are the one who established the connection between host and totem. Without you, we never would have been able to do this. **_

_What are you guys? Where are you? _

_**We've given ourselves to them. Given our lives. For the good of Spira. **_

_I don't believe it. I don't believe it at all! We shouldn't have to die just because of this virus... that's what the virus does, is bring death. We're only feeding it. _

_**We didn't say it was permanent. **_

_...not permanent? _

_**Temporary. Let them borrow our life force. If our lives are required permanently, that will be our decision. **_

_Then...? What is this? Where are we? _

_**Come, join us. Bond to us. We will make them stronger. **_

_Can I trust you? _

**_What other choice do you have?_**


	12. Chapter Twelve

"I've got mine," Ghiki announced as he leapt from the branches of the three-trunked tree and landed on the ground.

"About time," Kogoro said, scratching behind his ear. Already his pendant was around his neck, hanging down slightly behind his chin.

Ghiki stuck his tongue out at Kogoro. "Where's Flurry?"

"Don't know," Kogoro replied, looking upwards. "He was here just a moment ago..."

"Don't get your fur all in a bunch," came a voice from behind them. As the two of them turned, they saw Flurry landing and fluttering his wings behind them. "Just my host. Can you feel them?"

"I noticed it a few minutes ago," Kogoro replied, turning his body fully around to face Flurry. "Stronger, it seems."

"Do you think they've bonded?" Ghiki perched on top of Kogoro's shoulders again, peering at Flurry.

"The darkness has grown stronger, anyway," Flurry replied ambiguously.

"It's about time," Ghiki said, folding his arms after making sure his sacred pendant was hanging properly around his neck. "I thought mine was going to continue to fight me forever."

"I think they're confused," Kogoro offered, wagging his tail.

"What's there to be confused about?" Ghiki paused for a moment, seeming to think. "I mean, all we did was drag them to this secret place, scare them half to death, put them in sanity-reducing situations, and use their momentary loss of control on their own minds to take control of their bodies for our own use--"

Flurry blinked. "Do I sense sarcasm?"

"No," Ghiki replied, smirking again. "Never."

_------_

_------_

"So," Ghiki said, perching on the edge of the cliff, looking down onto the snow-covered plains of Macalania, "what's the plan, guys?"

The black haze had descended on the whole area, making it almost impossible for any of them to see each other. The only reason Ghiki knew that Kogoro was here was because he was perched on the dog's back. "We really have to play this by ear," Kogoro said, his voice not being impeded by the haze really. "Go in there and see what's going wrong and then--"

Suddenly there was a loud roar from above their heads. Ghiki, surprised, jumped off Kogoro's back and cowered in the blackened snow.

"Flurry!" Kogoro shouted, rearing up on his hind legs.

Ghiki looked up. Flurry had taken off, soaring up into the sky -- at least, that's what Ghiki thought he was doing. He could only make out a vague blur moving through the black haze.

A few moments later, Flurry's voice returned as calm as it ever was. "It's an airship."

"An airship?" Kogoro padded over to Flurry, and Ghiki followed. "What are they--"

Whatever Kogoro was going to say next was obscured by a loud explosion, followed by a plume of flame from the center of the iced lake.

"What are they _doing_??" Flurry was angry, and he ruffled his feathers. "Do they not realize what they're tampering with??"

"They're only going to make it worse for themselves," Kogoro said saidly, stepping forward to get a closer look.

Down in the ravine, on the lake, the black haze was growing thicker now. Where it had been nearly impossible to see before, everything was now completely obscured. Black smoke billowed up into the air, getting caught on the winds aloft and spreading it throughout the upper atmosphere to drop wherever the air pressure lessened.

Part of the black smoke attached itself to the airship, too, causing it to fly in a convoluted pattern... steadily falling toward the ground.

_------_

_------_

In a deafening explosion of crashes and metallic screaming, the airship crashed not far from where the three sacred animals perched. The black haze and smoke coated the outer portion of it, seeping in through the engines and the air vents. The three animals hurried over -- Ghiki rode on Kogoro's back as he ran, but Flurry inevitably arrived first. The ship was in a sorry state of affairs, but it couldn't have crashed in a better place. The huge drift of snow protected the main body of the ship, even though its outer engines were completely destroyed. The people on board would be okay, if a little injured.

Unless the black haze got to them. Without protective relics, it would eat their bodies alive.

"There are people on board," Kogoro exclaimed, looking in a window.

Ghiki thought that was rather obvious, as one of them -- a girl with blonde hair held up in elaborate braids -- was leaning and pounding on the window.

"The virus will get to them," Flurry remarked, looking rather disinterested.

"We can't let that happen," Ghiki replied, putting his paw up against the window near the human's hand.

"Why not?" Flurry sounded disappointed.

Kogoro gasped. "Because," he said, looking at Ghiki incredulously, "these are the ones with the other half of the sphere."

"Exactly," Ghiki said, nodding. He looked at the blonde girl sadly. "And if we let it get them, we'll have to start all over--"

"Troublesome," Flurry interrupted, taking off and flying up into the air. "Spira would be doomed. Shall we?"

_------_

_------_

"It's them," Yuna affirmed, nodding at Rikku. "That's definitely Ghiki, look at his paw..."

"And back there, that's Flurry, I think," Paine added, leaning over to get a better look.

"I don't get it," Rikku said, looking back and forth between Yuna and Paine. "How did they get out there? We're not even in the right dress sphere!"

"Um," Yuna said, smiling shyly and looking at Rikku. "Are you sure about that?"

"Yes, of course I'm sure!" Rikku turned away from the window and crossed her arms at Yuna, but then stopped short and looked down at herself.

Paine couldn't suppress the snicker. "Sometimes I wonder if Rikku's certainty is worth anything."

"How did this happen??" Rikku stamped her foot, her toes almost catching on the hem of her Trainer dress. "I didn't even _change_ to this dress sphere! At least, I don't remember it--"

"Maybe they did it," Yuna mused quietly, still looking out the window.

"The _animals_?" Paine sounded a little incredulous.

"Why not?" Yuna shrugged. "They had to come from somewhere, right? Maybe they're using a dress sphere too..."

"So wait a minute," Rikku said, waving her finger at Yuna, "are you saying that _they_," she indicated out the window, where the three animals had now disappeared, "are controlling _us_?"

Yuna smiled wryly. "Maybe."

"Hey girls," Paine said from the window. "You should look at this."

The other two turned and looked out the window as well. When the airship crashed, they had fallen into a thick fog of black haze that had coated all the windows and made it nearly impossible to see more than a foot past the glass. Now it seemed like there were little beads of light running back and forth along the glass, and the air around the window was clearing.

"That black fog," Rikku said, pressing her hands against the window, "that's the virus, isn't it?"

"It's what made us so sick before," Yuna replied, mimicking Rikku's position against the window.

Paine smirked, looking upwards as Flurry descended from the skies. Her eyes followed his flight path down to the ground, where the other two animals joined him. She widened her eyes in surprise as the monkey -- Ghiki -- turned around and waved at them before hopping on the dog's -- Kogoro's -- back and disappearing into the fog. "It seems like they're protecting us," Paine said softly, folding her arms.

"Protecting us?" Rikku leaned back from the window, hands on her hips. "We don't need protecting! We saved the world -- twice!"

"But then we knew what we were up against," Yuna added sadly, leaning back against the window. "We can't do anything against an enemy that we can't see and don't know how to fight."

"Yuna?" Paine tilted her head. "It sounds oddly like you're giving up."

Yuna opened her mouth in surprise. "Never!" She put her hand over her open mouth indignantly. "I'm just saying that... that..."

"We need to lay low for a while!" Rikku raised her arm in the air triumphantly. "So we can... assess the situation!"

"Yeah, that's it!" Yuna smiled, nodding in agreement with Rikku. "We can't just go running off into a black haze without knowing what we're getting into!"

Paine blinked at Yuna, then shook her head with a snicker. "Riiight..."


	13. Chapter Thirteen

"Right, now that we've got them taken care of, we can continue," Ghiki said, turning around and waving at the humans in the crashed airship. Then, with a graceful hop, he jumped up on Kogoro's back.

The light from the protective barrier that they had enacted using the power of their relics was still shimmering behind them, though they could not see it through the thickening darkness of the fog. Kogoro could barely see the ground beneath him as he walked, and Ghiki was thankful that he had his friend's back to ride on. Occasionally they would hear a call from Flurry above them directed them on the correct path that would eventually lead them to the lake.

It took hours, but it felt like days, before Kogoro stopped and held his paw up in the air and sniffed it. "Mud," he told Ghiki, turning his head. "We must be at the shore of Lake Macalania."

"Shouldn't the tree have noticed us by now?" Ghiki wondered, looking up toward the sky, waiting for a signal from Flurry.

Without warning, feathers rustled against Ghiki's back and tail. He jumped and turned, barely holding onto Kogoro's back, and glared at Flurry. "Could've warned us before you landed," he muttered, crossing his arms.

"The tree is thick and strong," Flurry said, completely ignoring Ghiki's complaints. "And there's no footpath as far as I can tell. Water separates X-Death and us."

"Well, you can't say it's stupid," Ghiki replied, biting his lip. "It learned its lesson the last time."

"How are we going to get across?" Kogoro asked, sitting down in the blackened snow.

"You mean how are _you_ going to get across," Flurry remarked, looking up indignantly.

Kogoro was offended by that. "Just because you can fly--"

"Hold on, we need root and leaf, right?" Ghiki tried to be a peacemaker usually. The fighting between the other two could often get into a serious argument, and that was the last thing the world needed.

"Supposedly," Flurry replied, picking at a few feathers on his right wing. "There's only one leaf though, and it's well-concealed, and in a dangerous place near the center of the trunk."

"Ugh, that's a pain in the--"

"What about the root?" Kogoro asked, interrupting Ghiki's statement.

"The root is obscured by a thick black haze," Flurry answered, dropping his feather on the ground. "It seems that's where the virus-haze is actually emitted."

Ghiki watched Flurry's feather as it drifted through the haze towards the ground for as long as he could. Suddenly, he noticed something. "Guys?"

"Then how are we going to get to that? We can't rely on you to fly over there and get both of them," Kogoro was saying.

"I could easily handle it, rather than rely on you two," Flurry replied, cinching his talons into Kogoro's back.

"Hey, if you're going to claw me, don't sit on my back," Kogoro protested.

"Guys!" Ghiki jumped off Kogoro's back and made his way to where the feather had fallen. Once the other two were quiet, shocked by his sudden outburst, Ghiki continued. "Look."

Kogoro turned and lowered his nose to where Ghiki was pointing. Flurry even hopped off Kogoro's back and, fluttering his wings, examined the ground as well.

"The haze is coming out of the ground," Kogoro observed, speaking very slowly.

"But the haze..." Flurry spoke very slowly as well, looking up at the other two. from the root."

"The virus-haze has been spreading," Ghiki prompted, pointing down at the ground. "And trees, when they're growing, spread their--"

"Roots!" Kogoro's eyes widened as he made the connection. "The root must be extended underneath here."

"And we only need a piece of the root in order to be able to contain it," Flurry added, spreading his wings. He looked at Kogoro then. "That's what you can do... you don't need to cross the water. You can do your part right here."

"I'll dig for it," Kogoro replied, nodding his head quickly. "It's up to you guys to get the leaf."

"You must distract it," Flurry insisted, flapping his wings broadly. "Make it think it's being attacked from the shore. This way, we will have a better chance at getting to the center of the trunk."

"I will do that," Kogoro agreed, looking down at Ghiki. "I won't be quick about it. You two be safe."

"Wait," Ghiki said, breaking into the conversation. "Us _two_?"

"Of course," Flurry replied with a bit of a squawk that usually indicated he was smirking. "I can carry you, but only you have the dexterity to remove the leaf entirely and carry it without damaging it."

"So you're just going to drop me at the heart of X-Death and leave me?"

"Hardly," Flurry replied, looking off into the distance. "I have to carry you back."

_------_

_------_

Ghiki assisted as best as he could with Kogoro's digging. As they delved farther beneath the surface, he could hear the root extending, X-Death groaning. The three of them knew it would take a while for a tree to react to the attack... that was X-Death's one downfall.

Finally, they reached a softer part of the ground, through which a root could easily tunnel. The haze grew thick in the hole, and Kogoro coughed a little as he continued to dig. Ghiki cheered him on, sending all the power of the holy relic to Kogoro to help him persevere.

"I've got it," Kogoro whispered after a long silent moment when the digging stopped. There was a loud cracking and splintering sound, like the sound of wood being chopped.

That was when they heard and felt a shudder from under the water. A tremor ran through the ground underneath them, causing the murky black water to rise up and fall onto the pathway. The sides of the pathway that had been cut into the rock crumbled and fell, falling in on themselves, and the ground seemed to move in a wave towards them.

X-Death was countering Kogoro's attack.

"Now!" Flurry cried, lifting into the air.

Before Ghiki could even react, he felt Flurry's strong talons around his body, and his paws left the ground.

_------_

_------_

They flew fast through the haze. The branches of the tree stretched out as they circled from behind, intending to approach from X-Death's blind side while it was busy going after Kogoro, who was running along the perimeter of the lake waiting for the other two.

"There, in the center," Flurry instructed.

Ghiki looked forward, squinting his eyes to see through the haze. Finally, he thought he could see it -- a tiny shimmer of green through the blackness. He nodded in affirmation, and Flurry swooped down near the trunk.

Dodging oncoming branches left Ghiki with a long slit on the left side of his neck and Flurry missing more than a few feathers, but as they drew closer, an opening appeared. "Go," Flurry commanded, and dropped Ghiki toward the center as he turned to distract X-Death some more.

Ghiki fell through the air, but latched onto a moving branch with his left paw. Using this to swing himself upwards, he used the momentum and almost floated between branches as he made his way toward the center. The little shimmer of green kept his attention, and he always moved in the direction of it, constantly keeping his eyes focused on his goal. That would be the last thing they needed. The root and leaf, taken to a holy site, could have the ritual performed on them to seal away the power of X-Death for ten centuries.

Unfortunately, it would kill the hosts in the process. The sealing required three sacrifices of life force to hold it. The sacred animals were willing to make this sacrifice, each giving up his life to ensure the continued survival of the world.

_------_

_------_

_What?_

_Sacrifice? Life force sacrifice?_

_That wasn't part of the deal. _

_That wasn't the agreement. _

_We didn't agree to loan you our lives in order to have them sacrificed!!_


	14. Chapter Fourteen

"Flurry!!!" Ghiki's voice was lost in the groaning of the tree as the trunks moved around him. He couldn't contact his friend. He couldn't escape, couldn't ask what to do, couldn't find out why his paw was passing right through the leaf as though it was an illusion.

It was an illusion. The leaf was just a fake. A beam of light designed to lure them into a trap.

Ghiki could feel the trunks closing in on him, and all he could do was grasp at thin air where the leaf should have been, but wasn't.

Failure was right there in the palm of his paw.

It was still there, the empty space where the leaf should have been, even as Flurry swooped in from under the branches and locked his talons around Ghiki's body again and took off with him in a great rustle of feathers.

"It was an illusion," Ghiki admitted as Flurry soared through the air with him.

"No time for that now," Flurry replied, his voice gutteral, abruptly changing direction in mid-air.

Ghiki turned his head, and noticed instantly what it was that Flurry was concentrating so hard on. It seemed that X-Death had noticed their presence, finally, and now was using its branches and limbs in an attack against them in mid-air. Limbs curled around as though they were made of flesh and not wood, creating a net before them.

Flurry swooped and soared, avoiding falling shattered pieces of wood as X-Death destroyed itself in order to stop them.

"Flurry, no, you don't get it," Ghiki tried to say as he turned to protest. "We have to go back, the leaf wasn't really there, it was all a trick--"

"Getting out of here alive is more important!" Flurry's wings spread even farther as he floated down, narrowly missing the secondary trunk of X-Death as it swung around. Ghiki could feel the wind created ruffle his fur in a very disturbing way.

"No!" Ghiki protested suddenly, trying to wedge his way out of Flurry's grasp. "Getting the leaf is our job. It's what we have to do! If we leave now--"

"If we leave now, we'll have another chance," Flurry insisted. "If we're caught, the world will be without any sort of hope!"

The net of branches and limbs that X-Death had created was closing around them. Snapped branches fell down to the water, creating splashes that Ghiki could almost feel on his fur. Flurry was flying right for the net, his talons closing around Ghiki and drawing blood.

Or, no, they weren't drawing blood. Ghiki was already bleeding quite badly from that cut... on his neck. He vaguely remembered receiving it. Right now, all he cared about was how tiny that hole in the netting was, and how fast Flurry was flying right towards it.

Suddenly, it seemed as if time slowed down. Something snapped in Ghiki's mind, and he could almost feel his body begin to tense. Something was going horribly wrong. He was about to die in the grasp of the very thing he had been created to fight.

"Do you hear them?"

Flurry's voice almost startled Ghiki enough to make him fall out of the bird's grasp.

_We did not agree to this._

"I hear them," Ghiki replied, feeling his back nearly breaking.

The net was growing closer.

A loud groan rang through the air, the wave of vibration visible in the black haze.

_We will not let this go on._

------

------

_The virus -- X-Death -- is designed to take lives. _

_We will not let that happen any more. _

_We need to stop it, but a sacrifice from us is the same as the sacrifice of summoners for Sin. _

_Our lives will just give it the momentum to return later. And then this will have to happen all over again. _

_The haze is dark. The virus brings darkness. _

_The way to remove the darkness is with light. _

_**I can bring the light.**_

_...are you sure?_

_We can't leave you. _

_**You can and you will. This is my destiny.**_

_...we have to. There's no other way. _

_No! I can't let you do this!_

_**You have no choice. You two must return. I am no longer needed.**_

_Come on. Come to me. We'll escape._

_No! I won't leave you! You are sacrificing yourself--_

_**Better to end it forever than to let it continue because of your own sentimental attachments. **_

_No one should have to be lost in order to end this!_

_**We must lose something great in order to gain something greater. **_

_Come with us! We'll find another way!_

_**No. It is my time. Besides, you'll see me again.**_

_...we will?_

_**For once, I know something for sure. **_

_...I'm sad to lose you. _

_**Grieving wastes time. Go. Run. It's time. **_

_Goodbye. _

_**For now.**_

------

------

The next thing Gippal knew, he was flying through the air.

"There you are," he heard Baralai say, only after a resounding _thud_.

Gippal shook his head. Blood went flying. His own blood.

Once his mind cleared, he realized that he was on the back of a dog. On the back of Baralai's Totem form.

And they were running. Really really fast.

The black haze that Gippal remembered was clearing. The air was growing lighter as the scenery flashed past them. Gippal clinged to Baralai's back with his blood-soaked fur-covered arms, holding on for dear life, even if his world was growing blurry around him.

"Hold on," he heard Baralai say. The voice was so soothing and familiar that Gippal couldn't help but to obey.

He heard a great groaning and a deep-voiced shouting behind him. He lifted himself off Baralai's back as much as he could while still holding on, and turned his head to see what had happened behind them.

It hadn't occurred to him that his time spent as nothing more than the provider of life force was actually real. That the conversation was real.

It hadn't struck him that he had just said goodbye until he saw the pure white light rise to the sky through the black haze left behind them and explode into a brilliant rain of holy light.

Prismatic white light soaked down through the black cloud, covering the tree, eradicating the black virus-infested haze.

In a vision-shattering flurry of prisms, Lake Macalania exploded into a dazzling mushroom cloud of light. The shock wave was enough to send Baralai stumbling forward, and the sonic boom that followed shattered their consciousness.

"Lightfall," Gippal murmured as he felt his body fall into the deep snow, and the pure white overtook his vision.


	15. Epilogue

"There, that should do it," Gippal said, coming up to the hill overlooking what the people were now calling Macalania Bay. The effect of the destruction of the root, much of the banks around the former Lake Macalania had collapsed on themselves. The collapsing resulted in a long inlet from the ocean opening up to the lake, and the area was going to become a very prime area for development and trade. Boats could now sail and easily reach the Woods, and with the close proximity to Bevelle, it was going to be in high demand.

As of that moment, however, the area was still relatively deserted. The Travel Agency still stood, and now another building stood beside it.

Gippal lifted his hands and revealed that he was holding two half-full wine glasses. The light from the setting sun glinted off Baralai's raven black hair as he turned his head and smiled at Gippal. "It's all done, isn't it?"

"All it needs is to be officially opened," Gippal replied, handing Baralai one of the glasses. He couldn't help the warmth he felt inside when he looked back at the new, sturdy brick building with the large coloured windows, and he raised his glass toward it.

"I think he'd like it," Baralai murmured, turning and raising his glass too. "It was something we both strived for... but what he truly wanted."

"Are you kidding? We all strived for it," Gippal corrected him gently, putting his free arm around Baralai's shoulders as they looked at each other then back at the building. "And here it is."

Gippal gestured to the new building, and Baralai smiled proudly. An Al Bhed worker was just hammering the last of the holding nails into the finely crafted mithril-gilded sign that read _The Spira Historical Society_.

Gippal raised his glass a little higher, and smiled as he announced to anyone listening, "To you, Nooj."

Three female voices chimed in from the entrance of the Travel Agency. "To Nooj," Yuna, Rikku, and Paine said in unison, raising wine glasses of their own.

Baralai tossed Gippal a smile, a very all-knowing one at that, as though he wanted to tell Gippal that he didn't think the three girls would ever know the whole story. Gippal thought he agreed with Baralai -- and it was probably better that way.

Clinking his glass against Gippal's, Baralai said, "To our old friend."

_------_

_------_

"Gippal, why do you still wear your eyepatch?"

Looking over at Baralai, Gippal shrugged and leaned back on his hands, looking up at the blossoming trees in Macalania Woods. Spring was upon them now, and the Spira Historical Society had been successfully opened for almost three months. Sphere hunters from all around the world donated to the organization, and now several historians worked for the museum, piecing the information together to create a picture of Spira's true past.

"You don't still need it, do you?" Baralai continued, still looking at Gippal. "I mean, you can see just fine, right?"

"I can see fine, yeah," Gippal replied, letting his arms slide out from underneath him and collapsing back against the ground of the path they sat on. "But the eyepatch... it's part of who I am, you know? Reborn or not, I'm still Gippal... and that means the goofy Al Bhed with one eye."

"You're just worried that people won't recognize you," Baralai replied, turning and looking down at a leaf he was turning over and over in his fingers.

"Maybe," Gippal said, a motion in the canopy of the forest catching his eye, "but it's more like... it's something that I have to remind me of the past. Because being reborn doesn't mean I should forget what's happened to me in the past." He laughed lightly for a moment, his eyes finally finding the source of the motion to be a bird looking down at him from a high branch. "Kinda like what we're trying to teach all of Spira with the Historical Society. Guess I should set an example."

With a flurry of motion, the bird from above left the branch and swooped down, landing on a branch very near to Baralai and eyeing the two of them curiously. Finally, Baralai saw it too and got to his feet as if taking a closer look. "Gippal, come look," he said, motioning Gippal over with a slow wave of the hand. "It's a falcon."

Gippal didn't know a falcon from a Malboro, but he took Baralai's word for it and even hauled himself up off the ground to join Baralai near the bird in question. "Are they rare or something?"

Baralai nodded gravely. "They thought the last one was seen in Bevelle a few months before the whole Vegnagun incident. They're native to these woods, and when the woods was dying, everyone thought it took the falcon with it."

Gippal raised his eyebrow. "But with the return of the Guado, didn't the forest come back to life again?"

"Supposedly," Baralai replied, taking a few steps closer to the bird, who didn't seem particularly perturbed by this turn of events. "He's so young... only a couple of months or so..."

"Maybe the removal of the tree helped out somehow," Gippal suggested, shrugging his shoulders and leaning towards the bird who was now seeming to engage him in a staring contest. The look that the bird was giving him was disturbingly deep and knowledgable, as though it had been around a lot longer than its lifespan seemed to indicate.

They were silent for a long moment as the bird looked back and forth between them. Suddenly, the falcon extended his wings and leaned forward, lodging his beak in Gippal's hair.

"Hey!" Gippal protested, drawing back. This worked to his disadvantage; the bird lifted into the air and as it did so, lifted Gippal's eyepatch up through his hair and off over the top of his head.

The falcon, flying away while carrying Gippal's eyepatch, turned its head and gave the pair of them one last long look.

Gippal could have sworn the bird smirked at him.


End file.
